TH

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terprets
moral aj

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Book.

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vs. It in-
hows their
(t is more,

it helps to show to Americans the relation of
those tragic and world-shaping events to the
future political and economic life of the United
States.

For these reasons, so important for a country
too slowly arousing itself to its need, the book is
commended to citizens of the United States by
The American Rights League,

by the Executive Committee.

By James M. Beck

The Evidence in the Case
The War and Humanity

The
War and Humanity

A Further Discussion of the Ethics of the

World War and the Attitude and

Duty of the United States

By
James M. Beck

Of the New York Bar
Author of " The Evidence in the Case "

" Methinks I see In my mind a noble
and puissant nation, rousing herself,
like a strong man after sleep, and
shaking her invincible locks."

—MiJtoa,

G. P. Putnam's Sons

New York and London

XLbe 'Knickerbocfiet press

1916

ie'"

Copyright, 19 i6

BY

JAMES M. BECK
Second Impression

JOi MWi

"Cbe *nicherbocFier prcsB, Hew Borli

MY DEAR WIFE,

to whom my debt is infinite,

This Book is Dedicated

INTRODUCTION

The success of The Evidence in the Case must be
the author's justification, if any, in putting into
this permanent form some of his contributions
to the controversial history of the war. In a
sense the book may be regarded as a sequel to
The Evidence in the Case.

The leading motif of that book was the moral
obligation of nations to justify their acts in the
forum of the general conscience of mankind, and
as this volume deals with subsequent developments,
which raise the same questions of moral responsi-
bility in the Supreme Court of Civilization, the
connection between the two books is obvious.

"The Distress of Nations" deals with the world-
old problem of war and peace and discusses some
of the many suggested remedies and their obvious
limitations.

"The Submarine Controversy" discusses the
limitations which the conscience of mankind has
imposed upon belligerents in the exercise of force.

"The Case of Edith Cavell" seeks to illustrate

vi Introduction

the rights of non-combatants by one of the most
pitiful tragedies of the war.

"The Foreign PoHcy of George Washington"
considers one of the suggested reasons for the fail-
ure of the United States to intervene in a more
practical way in behalf of outraged humanity.

"Where There Is No Vision" analyses the
historic causes and psychological reasons for the
neutrality of America and their bearing upon its
future influence as a Master State of the world.

"America and the Allies" seeks to acquit the
American people of that complete indifference
to the moral aspects of the war, which has been
so erroneously attributed to them by foreign
critics.

"The Vision of France" finally suggests the
spirit in which France has met, and every nation
should meet, the problems of the present crisis in
civilization.

All of these essays in their original form were
public addresses, which the author made as his
contribution to the public opinion of the time.
The first was delivered at Toronto. The second
at Boston on the anniversary of the sinking of
the Lusitania. The third at Montreal at a Cavell
memorial meeting. The fourth at Philadelphia
on the birthday of Washington in 191 5. The

Introduction vii

fifth in London at a luncheon given in the
author's honour by the Pilgrims' Society of Eng-
land. The last was delivered in New York at a
banquet given by the France-America Society in
honour of M. Jusserand, the Ambassador of France
to the United States.

These addresses, with the exception of the last
two, have been adapted by the author into the
form of a literary essay and considerable material
has been added. The last two addresses are
printed as orally delivered because much of their
force depended upon the spirit of the occasion,
and while that spirit loses much in the printed
page, yet it seemed desirable to keep the form of
the spoken word rather than adapt it to the literary
form of an essay.

As these addresses contain severe reflections
upon the present Administration at Washington,
the publication of this book has been purposely
delayed until after the Presidential election, in
order to exclude the possibility in the reader's
mind that any opinion that the author has ex-
pressed is intended for mere political effect in the
present Presidential campaign.

To those who may suggest that the criticisms of
the President are too severe, the author would
reply that Republican institutions live by criticism

viii Introduction

and perish when thought is shackled. If the oil
of anointing, which was once supposed to sanctify
the head of the monarch and give him infalHbiUty,
has also fallen upon the head of the President,
then the author is much mistaken in the character
of American institutions.

The freedom of speech and of the press was
intended to give to the public that opportunity
for open discussion in which a Republican form of
Government lives and moves and has its very
being. Germany is today in an abyss of disaster
because a rigid censorship of that, which Bismarck
called "the reptile press," has blinded a great
people and driven them into an abyss of disaster.

Not only the future welfare of the Republic
but the truth of history requires vigorous but
fair criticism in such a sifting of the nations as
is now in progress. If the President can at will
chloroform the conscience of the American people
with verbal anaesthetics and then claim to be
immune from criticism, then there is little prospect
that any sentiment can be developed which will
enable the American Republic to be, as some of us
reverently believe the God of Nations intended it
to be, the foremost interpreter of the best ideals
of humanity.

No more stirring and pathetic story has been

Introduction ix

told in this war than that which tells of the French
ofRcer, whose trench had been almost wholly
destroyed by a destructive fire and who, with all
his men, was either dead or wounded unto death.
Silence reigned in the trench where seemingly
none was left to defend, and the enemy troops
charged across the open ground to take possession
of it. Suddenly this officer, in a spirit of feverish
ecstasy, arose to his feet and cried "Debout, les
morts!" and to that clarion cry his wounded com-
panions-in-arms responded by rising to their feet
and in one last supreme effort hurled the invader
back.

The spirit of America is neither dead nor
sleeping. But under our form of Government the
people are powerless to move in their foreign re-
lations, unless the Executive leads. That they
lacked a true leader in this greatest moral crisis of
civilization, was their infinite misfortune. Every
one who loves America and who reaUzes the part
which it could and should play in the great To-
morrow, should by spoken word and printed speech
do what in him lies to arouse the American spirit,
a power which has never failed us in the past and
which today, although for the time being stifled
by a narrow, incompetent, and cowardly leadership,
is still instinct with immortal life.

X Introduction

This will explain the quotation from Milton's
A reopagitica on the title-page. To America there
remains a splendid destiny in this war-ridden
world. All that the great Republic, whose in-
stincts are still sound, needs is a leader with such
vision as Washington and Lincoln had.

" Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puis-
sant nation rousing herself like a strong man after
sleep, and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I
see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth and
kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam;
purging and unsealing her long-abused eyesight at
the fountain itself of heavenly radiance.''

James M. Beck.

New York, November, 1916.

CONTENTS

I. — The "Distress of Nations"

II. — The Submarine Controversy

III. — The Case of Edith Cavell .

IV. — The Foreign Policy of President
Washington ....

3

57

lOI

167
205
249
273

v.— "Where There Is No Vision" .

VI. — America and the Allies

VII. — The Vision of France

Appendix I. — Dr. Zimmermann's Defence of
the Execution of Edith
Cavell 295

" II. — Appeal of the Belgian Bishops 299

" III. — Speech of Viscount Bryce . 316

I

THE DISTRESS OF NATIONS"

" upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity; the
sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for
fear and for looking after those things which are coming
on the earth." — Luke xxi, 25, 26.

"THE DISTRESS OF NATIONS"

" Upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity; the sea
and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and
for looking after those things which are coming on the earth."
Luke XXI, 25, 26.

War is the most wondrous and ghastly pheno-
menon of human Hfe. Through all the ages, it has
been the supreme agony and travail of humanity.
Old as the world, continuous as its history, the
problem of a just and durable peace is as vital
today and pressing for decision as when it was
first said of old, " Cain, Cain, where is thy brother ? "

Although over nineteen centuries have passed
away since His coming, whom the suffrages of un-
counted millions have given the exalted title of
"Prince of Peace," yet peace on earth seems still
as insubstantial as a rainbow, a bow of promise
perhaps, but still only an evanescent, insubstantial
rainbow, formed by the ever brightening rays of
justice shining through the tears of human pity.
Indeed, the great Teacher foresaw chat wars and

3

4 The War and Humanity

rumours of war would trouble men long after
His coming. He predicted that such things
"must first come to pass," for "nation shall rise
against nation and kingdom against kingdom."
He foretold that upon the earth there would
be long after His advent "distress of nations
with perplexity, . . . men's hearts failing them
for fear and for looking after those things which
are coming on the earth."

His portentous prophecy has been fulfilled to the
letter, and the history of the intervening centuries
has been written in blood. The triumphal car of
civilization has been a war chariot, rolling like
that of Juggernaut over the innumerable necks of
the slain. Down the vista of the centuries for
ever marches that ghostly army, of which the
Abb6 Perreyve wrote:

Unseen by the corporal eyes, but too clearly
visible to the mind's eye, the great army of the
dead, the abandoned, the forgotten, the army of
cruel tortures and prolonged infirmities, which
pursues its fatal march behind what we call glory.

If Nature did not mercifully remove the dead
debris of war, as she consumes from year to year
the dead leaves of autumn, no circle in Dante's
Inferno would be comparable in horror to this
blood-stained earth. Rarely, perhaps never, in

The Distress of Nations 5

two thousand years has the temple of Janus been
completely closed.

What is sadder still, the horrors of war, far
from lessening with the progress of the centuries,
seem only to increase in their frightful intensity
as the sovereign reason of man multiplies his in-
finite capacity for destruction.

It is true that the code of war was, until the
beginning of the present struggle, far more humane
and enlightened in the twentieth century than
in the first; and yet the twentieth century has
witnessed a retrogression to primitive savagery in
the disregard by one group of combatants of those
humane principles, which had been evolved in
modem times and which sought to restrict the
horrors of war, so far as humanly possible, to
combatants only.

The sinking of the Lusitania was unthinkable at
the beginning of the war. Today, it has become
by repetition merely a commonplace of almost
idle diplomatic controversy. Even if the code of
war had still preserved the spirit of humanity,
which had marked the natural progress of man-
kind in the slow progress of the centuries, yet the
horrors of war would still have been so greatly
multiplied by man's mastery of nature and the
infinite possibilities of chemistry as to far tran-

6 The War and Humanity

scend in horror all that has gone before. Civiliza-
tion has been stupefied by the spectacle of whole-
sale death inflicted with cataclysmic violence.

Formerly, the maximum of military preparation
was reached by an army of 700,000 men, the
Grand Army of Napoleon. Today the combatants
are numbered by the millions, and daily battles
between armies equal in size to that mighty host,
with which Napoleon crossed the Niemen, are
dismissed with a brief paragraph in the daily
communique. Formerly, the longest battle did
not last a week. Today (September, 19 16), after
two hundred days of continuous conflict day and
night, a battle still rages at the eastern gateway of
France, in which over nine hundred thousand men
have been either killed, wounded, or captured,
and which in its stupendous horror has never
had a parallel since the world began. In five
days Brousiloff captured more Austrians than
Napoleon commanded men at Waterloo, and
yet this crushing advance is dismissed by a half
column in the daily press. In the sixteen princi-
pal battles of the eighteenth century less men fell
than have already fallen at Verdun, while the
forty-six greatest battles of the nineteenth cen-
tury, including Austerlitz, Borodino, Leipzig,
Waterloo, and Gettysburg, reaped a smaller

The Distress of Nations 7

harvest of death than the admitted losses of Ger-
many in the present war of men killed outright in
action. For all this we have one great compensa-
tion, that never in all the tide of time did the
godlike heroism of man reach greater heights of
sublimity.

The conditions of battle have likewise radically
changed for the worse. The heavens above and
the waters under the earth are now the battle-
grounds for the nations. Men fight today as
birds in the air, as fish in the sea, as moles in the
ground, and they easily surpass all these lesser
animals, for as Pegoud, the great French aviator,
once said: "The birds do not know how to fly."

Any one of the larger battleships, which recently
took part in the titanic struggle off the coast of
Denmark, could have put to flight with their
modern armament the combined Spanish, French,
and English fleets at Trafalgar like a hawk in a
dovecote, and yet a single torpedo suffices to
destroy in the twinkling of an eye one of these
Leviathans of the deep. The " pomp, pride, and
circumstance of glorious war" are gone, like Oth-
ello's occupation. During the summer of 19 16
the author was privileged to witness for three days
the battle on the Somme as the guest of the
British General Staff. Of the romantic glamour of

8 The War and Humanity

war he saw little, rarely hearing the roll of a drum,
or seeing the waving of a flag. It was an industrial
and mechanical war of stupendous dimensions.
Thousands of men — each grimly doing his allotted
task — were slowly blasting their adversaries out of
seemingly impregnable positions. It was a veri-
table Inferno, in which the infinite faculty of man
to do all and endure all was exercised beyond the
power of imagination to describe.

The stupendous horror of this war is brought
into greater relief when we recall the roseate
dreams of perpetual peace that prevailed even on
the eve of this titanic struggle.

This is the time of a great disillusion.

On the 23d of July, 19 14, the world was appar-
ently living in a state of profound peace. Never
before was the prospect of a durable peace
seemingly greater. To some extent in all nations
an insistent cry had gone up from the very souls
of the people for a better method of determining
international controversies. Many enlightened
statesmen were confidently of opinion that the
process of international arbitration would abolish
war; and more than one European state had
accepted the offer of the United States to execute
an agreement to determine all differences of
opinion by arbitration, although they might seem

The Distress of Nations 9

to involve in their nature even questions of
national honour.

The railroad, the steamship, and the telegraph
had apparently interwoven men of all nations into
a unity of purpose, understanding, and interest,
which it was hoped had created a sentiment of
human solidarity that would make impossible and
unnecessary the appeal to force. ' ' The parliament
of man and the federation of the world" seemed
measurably in sight when the representatives of
forty-four sovereign nations had twice met at the
Hague and with a fair approach to unanimity
had provided some machinery for the adjustment
of international differences.

The storm of human passions, which marked
every preceding century, seemed to be abating,
and in the skies even conservative thinkers thought
that they perceived the bow of promise. Closer
relations between the manual toilers of leading
nations seemed to give a promise that those who
bear the largest part of the physical burden of the
world would ensure its peace. Far above the
discordant cries, which in preceding centuries had
marked frenzied and maddened nations, those of
us, who tried to attune our souls to the symphony
of universal progress, thought we heard the nobler
strains of increasing fraternity and good will. As

10 The War and Humanity

all moral progress is a slow evolution, like that of
physical nature, many believed that the organism
of the universal state was being slowly but surely
evolved, even though yet in a very rudimentary
and embryonic form.

This has been the dream of jurists and political
philosophers in all time. It is not a modern con-
ception. Indeed, when was it ever better stated
than by the Spanish jurist, Juarez, who antedated
Grotius, the so-called Father of International Law ?
This learned and advanced thinker said:

The foundation of the law of Nations lies in this,
that the human race, though divided into various
peoples and kingdoms, has always a certain unity,
which is not merely the unity of species, but is also
political and moral; as is shown by the natural
precept of mutual love and pity, which extends to
all peoples, however foreign they may be to one
another, and whatever may be their character or
constitution. From which it follows that although
any state, whether a republic or a kingdom, may
be a community complete in itself, it is nevertheless
a member of that whole, which constitutes the
human race; for such a community is never so
completely self-sufficing but that it requires some
mutual help and intercourse with others, sometimes
for the sake of some benefit to be obtained, but
sometimes, too, from the moral necessity and crav-
ing, which are apparent from the very habits of
mankind.

The Distress of Nations n

How modern is this lofty sentiment, spoken
nearly four centuries ago, and yet how completely
this generous conception of the solidarity of man-
kind is now negatived by the present anarchy of
civilization !

Nor did the economic conditions which prevailed
in 1 9 14 suggest or cause this awful cataclysm.

Nearly all the civilized nations were growing
from day to day more prosperous in the peaceful
rivalry of commerce, most of all that nation, the
homicidal mania of whose ruling caste precipitated
this world-war. This appalling conflict, unlike its
predecessors, the Napoleonic wars, did not have its
original source, as in the days of the French Revo-
lution, in a half -starved and half -crazed people,
who were suffering from intolerable wrongs. In
those quiet days of the early summer of 1 9 14,
universal peace seemed to "lie like a shaft of light
across the land."

To all these expressions of generous idealism
there came at intervals a dissenting note. Those
who doubted, whether from despair of humanity or
from disbelief in the value of peace, most fre-
quently quoted the elder Moltke, when he pessi-
mistically and menacingly said :

Peace is only a dream, and not even a beautiful
dream.

12 The War and Humanity

We know now that we were living in a fool's
paradise. Mankind had made little, if any,
advance towards peace, and could not, as long
as there existed any powerful nation, which in
its objects and policies believed in the supre-
macy of might over right. We now know in the
bitterness of our souls that the retrogression to
barbarism involved in war depends not upon the
ideals of the nobler nations but upon the moral
concepts of the least moral of nations. The result
has been the "distress of nations," of which the
Master spoke, and not the "good will among
men " which heralded His coming. The true mes-
sage of the angelic song on the first of Christmas
eves was, accurately translated, not "good will to
men" but "peace to men of good will." Peace to
the pacific was the promise, but even in this qualified
form, two thousand years of almost uninterrupted
warfare justifies the belief that the message was the
statement of an ideal, not then or now a reality.
As George Eliot said of justice — and justice and
peace are morally synonymous, — justice "is not
without us as a fact, it is within us as a great
yearning." The peace of the pacific must depend
to a large extent upon the changed attitude of
the bellicose. The chain of peace can never be
stronger than its weakest link, for while it takes

The Distress of Nations 13

two to make peace, it takes only one to make a
quarrel.

History presents no more striking illustration
of this discouraging fact than the present war, for
nothing is clearer than that England, France, and
Russia in 19 14 earnestly strove for peace almost
to the point of self-effacement and national
humiliation, and that all their efforts to maintain
the peace of the world proved abortive because
Germany had determined, unless the rest of Europe
submissively accepted its will, to precipitate the
war. Almost in the twinkling of an eye, the
Prussian Samson threw down the fair temple of
civilization. That temple is today as the noble
Cathedral of Rheims. Its skeleton remains, but
its noble carvings and glorious stained-glass win-
dows are gone forever. Civilization must now re-
construct its fallen temple as best it may, and the
seemingly insoluble problem of such reconstruction
is enough to appal the stoutest heart.

It had been confidently believed that wars,
with the disappearance of autocratic government
and the rising power of democracy, would be
impossible. Lord Cromer in a recent article took
occasion to say that the spirit of democracy does
not make for peace. Is this true? Speaking
generally, the democracy of any nation, in which

14 The War and Humanity

public opinion is controlling, is ordinarily but not
invariably averse to an aggressive war. Their
emotions, rarely their interests, make them belli-
cose. Indeed, in this is its weakness as a force for
peace, for a democratic nation is generally unwilling
to prepare for war, and its unpreparedness invites
attack. France was not fully prepared in 19 14, Eng-
land (except at sea) wholly unprepared. Had it
been otherwise, Germany might never have at-
tacked. Lack of preparation made England hesitate
at the critical moment and this encouraged Germany
to strike the sudden and treacherous blow. While
a democracy, ordinarily pacific, may thus invite
war, it does not ordinarily provoke one.

This war was not caused by the democracy of
any nation. It was a war primarily initiated by
a few scheming and ambitious diplomats and
rulers in Central Europe, and the peoples of the
belligerent countries were given little time to
consider the policy of war until the dread Rubicon
had been hopelessly crossed. Certainly, the two
great democracies of Europe, England and France,
did not show any bellicose spirit in this crisis.

The imminent peril to France of Germany's
aggressive war left no alternative for that brave
people ; and it is not surprising that with an una-
nimity of sentiment which is beyond praise, the

The Distress of Nations 15

whole French nation rallied to their flag and have
again vindicated, by superhuman courage and
ability, their right to claim fellowship with the
heroic States of universal history.

Nor can anyone justly impute to the democracy
of England in this crisis an impetuous, bellicose
spirit. If it made any mistake it was that it did
not at once align itself with Russia and France
when the menace of Prussian aggression first
became unmistakable.

Germany had a great and militant democracy.
It was the so-called socialistic party. Whatever
may be its tenets as to internal government or eco-
nomic theories, it represented in its ultimate aim
the opposition to Kaiserism and militarism. Bis-
marck tried to strangle it as a serpent because he
saw how dangerous its growth would be to the
Hohenzollern dynasty. The Kaiser before the
war attempted to proscribe the socialists as polit-
ical outcasts. Nevertheless, the socialistic party
grew in Germany until at the outbreak of the war
it numbered over 4,000,000 of voters and was the
largest single political body in Germany, possessing
however no real governmental power in proportion
to its numbers, for Germany's electoral system is
a travesty on a government "by the people."

How then did this militant body of intellectual

i6 The War and Humanity

socialists act when their country initiated this
wanton struggle of aggression ?

Its leading organ was Vorwaerts, and it had no
illusions as to the nature of the struggle. Thus,
on July 25th, two days after Austria's ultimatum
to Servia, it editorially said that the "war fury,
unrestrained by Austrian imperialism, is setting
out to bring death and destruction to the whole
of Europe." It condemned the provocation of
the Austro-Hungarian Government and added
that its demands upon Servia "are more brutal
than have ever been put to an independent state
in the world's history, and can only be intended
deliberately to provoke war."

On July 29th it denounced the refusal of the
German Foreign Office to accept England's
proposition for mediation, and said that such
refusal placed upon the German Government
"the most awful responsibility before its own
people, before the foreign nations, and before the
forum of the world's history." It accurately
diagnosed the origin of the war by stating "that
the indications proved beyond doubt that the
camarilla of war lords is working with absolutely
unscrupulous means ... to carry out their fear-
ful designs to precipitate an international war, and
to start a world-wide fire to devastate Europe."

The Distress of Nations 17

Even after the declaration of martial law and
partial mobilization, Vorwaerts on July 31st
justified Russia in refusing to turn Servia over to
Austria and again denounced the action of its
own Government as "utterly without conscience."

No critic of Germany's policy has ever been more
vigorous in its denunciation than the expressions I
have quoted.

On July 29th, twenty-eight social democratic
mass meetings were held in Berlin alone to de-
nounce the war, and one of these is said to have
been attended by 70,000 men.

The disappointing sequel must now be noted.
On August 4th, nearly all of the members of the
socialistic party, with the exception of about fifteen,
completely wheeled about by voting for the first
war credit and suddenly became partisans of the
war. On the second war credit, voted on Decem-
ber 2d, the former leader of the socialists, Dr. Karl
Liebknecht, alone voted "No," and in so doing
publicly denounced the war and especially the
violation of the neutrality of Belgium and Luxem-
burg. Since then, at every debate in the Reich-
stag, Liebknecht has consistently attempted to
bring the truth to the attention of the German
people.

It is not surprising that this brave leader of the

1 8 The War and Humanity

people is now under arrest on a charge of treason.
When the records of this great war come to be
written, the moral heroism of no one of any nation
will shine more resplendently than that of Karl
Liebknecht. He has in truth been among, if not
the, "bravest of the brave." His voice, however,
has been only as one crying in the wilderness. No
one can question that the great mass of the Ger-
man people, including the socialists, who at first
denounced the war as an unspeakable crime, have
since been swept away by racial hatred and have
as yet exercised no appreciable influence for peace.
It must be said in candour that the average
man of any country would probably do the same,
for in times of excitement and passion, a democracy
does not ordinarily prevent war. As long as unjust
wars can at times be initiated by a limited group
of responsible statesmen, the dependence upon
democracy to prevent war cannot be very con-
siderable, especially in countries where public
opinion can be strangled even in times of peace
and where popular government is more of a delu-
sion than a reality. It is not reasonable to expect
the moderating force of a democracy in a country
where, as in Germany, a censored press can sub-
stitute any delusion for the truth. The German
socialists probably accepted in the early days of

The Distress of Nations 19

August, 1914, the inspired fiction of a wanton
Russian attack, just as today many believe that
Germany won a strategic victory at the Mame. ,
>' It was thought, at the beginning of this war,
that the advance of civiHzation had increased the
brotherhood of man by facilitating the communi-
cation of ideas and by making men of different
nations and races better acquainted. When a
man can talk by wireless telephone from Washing-
ton to Paris and be overheard by an eavesdropper
in Honolulu, the world, for the purpose of inter-
communication, is little more than a pin point;
and if all that were needed for the preservation of
peace was to enable men to communicate quickly
with each other, the end of war as a problem
would be in sight.

Unfortunately the increased intercommunica-
tion of men and their ability to come into closest
contact in commerce and social life also brings
with it the possibility of increased friction,
especially in an age as neurotic as ours, where
thoughts and impulses seem to be on a very
hair trigger. A complex age is as uncertain as
a sensitively organized individual.

Had the Austro-Servian dispute been developed
in other times, when intercommunication was less
easy, there would at least have been a cooling

20 The War and Humanity

time and there might never have been any war.
But with the swift communication of the tele-
graph and cable, the diplomatic wrangle, which
preceded the war, was practically as though the
Czar, the Kaiser, King George, Sazanoff, Count
Berchtold, Von Bethmann-HoUweg, Viviani, and
Sir Edward Grey were in one room. And when
men quarrel face to face and not at a discreet
distance, we know how quickly the passions rise
and how rapidly a quarrel may pass through all the
stages referred to by Touchstone in As You Like It.
This is precisely what happened in 1 9 14. With
the world in a state of profound peace on July
23d, there was within a week an exchange of rapid-
fire telegrams between rulers and statesmen, and
in the twinkling of an eye the world found itself
wrapped in a universal flame because one group of
disputants had resolved to impose its will on the
other nations or have recourse to war.

In this respect, the outlook for a millennial age of
peace is blacker than ever before, for not only is the
world now become a seething cauldron of hatred,
but at least for a half century these hatreds
will persist. This is not a trivial quarrel, which
can be adjusted with mutual good -will. Its
wounds are too deep. Never were they deeper.
Over ravaged fields, desolated homes, and new-

The Distress of Nations 21

made graves the men of the two groups of nations
will gaze at each other for at least another gen-
eration with irreconcilable hatred. How then can
their closer contact make for peace?

When the limited methods of locomotion and
intercommunication hemmed each nation into a
well-marked and detached territory, there was less
friction because less contact, whereas today the
facilities of intercommunication have undoubtedly
developed a social friction which, being accen-
tuated by pressing commercial rivalry, result in
combustible material which any powerful pyro-
maniac can set aflame.

Some have believed that the increased facilities
of intelligence would necessarily promote a higher
morality, which in itself would be an effective
check upon war. This was the view of Lord
Haldane and was expanded by him in his nota-
ble address at Montreal in 1913 to the Ameri-
can Bar Association into a profound and noble
oration. He spoke of a higher law, which had
its sanction and effective power in conscience
and to which he gave the German name "sittlich-
keit.'' He quoted Prof. Jhering of Gottingen in
saying that it was the merit of the German lan-
guage to have been the only one to find a really
distinctive and scientific expression for this higher

22 The War and Humanity

morality of man. It seems a pity that if the
pecuHar genius of the German language alone
could coin the expression, the same genius could
not have applied the principles oiJ'siUlichkeW*
to Germany's conduct of the war.

" Sittlichkeit/' as defined by Lord Haldane, was
that system of habitual or customary conduct,
ethical rather than legal, which embraces all of
those obligations of the citizens which it is bad
form to disregard, or, as defined by Fichte, it is
those principles of conduct which arise out of the
"hidden and uniform ground of action which we
assume to be present in the man, whose action is
not deflected and from which we can certainly
predict what he will do."

In other words, translating Fichte's ponderous
philosophizing into plain English, "sittlichkeit" is
character — an ethical habit which arises not so
much from conscious volition in the individual
as from the instinctive promptings of the inner
nature.

If the mere increase of intelligence promoted a
higher character of "sittlichkeit/' as thus defined,
we would naturally have expected that Germany,
as the most systematically instructed and in some
respects profoundly learned nation in the world,
would in this war, not merely have conformed to

The Distress of Nations 23

those existing usages, which a more humane civili-
zation had laboriously developed, but would
have even surpassed its opponents in the obser-
vance of the higher chivalry. "SittlichkeW has
chiefly served to corrupt the intellectual integrity
of the foremost scholars and philosophers of Ger-
many in leading them to condone offences that
are beyond condonation.

The trouble with "sittUchkeW as a remedy for
war is the different conceptions of " sittlichkeW*
which prevail in different nations. Indeed, the same
nation may have a different kind of " sittlichkeW
for different occasions. Turkey's " sittlichkeit^*
towards Armenia is very different from its martial
methods towards France and England, for I have
heard many English officers testify that "the Turk
fights Hke a gentleman."

When the war is over and the so-called processes
of peace begin, I have little confidence that
through any intellectual process Prussian mili-
tarists can ever be persuaded that any act of theirs
in the present war was not in accord with the
higher ''sittlichkeU." In this respect Prussian
psychology has been a revelation to the world.
To sink a Lusitania, shoot an Edith Cavell, and
commit a new wholesale " rape of the Sabines,"
as at Lille, seems to these military martinets so

24 The War and Humanity

natural that they cannot understand the indigna-
tion of the world. The German theorist is the
"wisest fool in civilization."

This suggests one of the most interesting and
important questions which the problem of the
coming peace will present.

What is to be done with the responsible rulers,
statesmen, generals, and admirals who have in
this war violated the proprieties of civilization and
the rules of warfare ?

In other wars, where the chivalry of battle has
been reasonably observed, there has been in the
attitude Qf the victor to the vanquished a fine
magnanimity m the hour of victory. Washing-
ton refused to accept the sword of Comwallis and
Grant returned that of Lee to the great Southern
chieftain and insisted that his impoverished
Southern soldiers should have their horses to
enable them to till their farms. When George
Washington died only a few years after the close
of the Revolution, the flags of English warships
were put at half mast, and no finer tributes were
paid to the great soldier than those that came from
England.

Shall Count Berchtold, who gave solemn assur-
ances to Europe of a most conciliatory treat-
ment of Servia and then issued the most brutal

The Distress of Nations 25

ultimatum known to history, escape some pun-
ishment ?

Shall von Tirpitz, who initiated the war on non-
combatants and at whose order the Lusitania
was sunk, be hereafter regarded among those
honourably vanquished?

Shall Zauberschweig who ordered, and von
Bissing who permitted, Edith Cavell to be shot
in the watches of the night after their subordinates
had given a solemn assurance to the represen-
tative of the United States that it would be
advised before any action was taken, be treated
in defeat as honourable soldiers?

Shall those Prussian generals, who marched
Belgian women and children before their soldiers,
ruthlessly shot innocent hostages, condemned
thousands of French women at Lille to degrading
peonage, and tried to coerce an unoffending nation
by the unspeakable policy of frightfulness, be
allowed to go "un whipped of justice"?

Shall the Kaiser, who outraged the fundamental
principles of civilization by violating, in the very
teeth of his country's pledges, the neutrality of Bel-
gium, be hereafter regarded as worthy of the respect
due to the honourable ruler of a great people ?

America, in solving the problems of corporate
misrule, found that it was necessary to go behind

26 The War and Humanity

the fiction of the corporation and, by regarding
guilt as personal, visit the condemnation of the law
upon individuals who committed wrongs in the
name of a corporation. The salutary effect of this
policy was immediate and manifest.

When in this crisis civilization proceeds to judg-
ment, shall not the Supreme Court of Civiliza-
tion sit as one of criminal assize and, if so, what
punishment shall be inflicted upon these be-
ribboned and much decorated criminals who have
brought upon the world this unspeakable tragedy ?

Will the fact that they may hereafter be visited
with the execration of the wise and good of every
nation, including their own people, be sufficient
punishment ?

Perhaps the last question answers the preceding
questions, but I cannot think so. May it not be
the imperative duty of civilization to make it a
dangerous pastime hereafter for scheming di-
plomats and ambitious soldiers to set the world
on fire?

The moral problem, however, is not as easy as
the preceding questions would indicate. It must,
however, be met, for on the occasion of the author's
recent visit to France and England, he was deeply
impressed with the fact that the publicists of both
countries were very earnestly discussing the

The Distress of Nations 27

question whether any terms of peace could be
accepted from their enemies, which did not carry
with them the right to exact suitable reparation
from those enemy belligerents who have grossly
violated the rules of war and the proprieties of
civilized life.

The assassination of Captain Fryatt and, above
all, the callous and cruel deportation of the women
of Lille and other French cities occupied by the
Germans, to work in the fields under Prussian
bayonets, have proved the last straws, which are
said to break even camels' backs. Public opinion
has grown in this matter to such a pitch of in-
tensity that Mr. Asquith felt moved to announce
on the floor of Parliament, as a pledge to his
infuriated nation, that at the proper time a repara-
tion would be exacted other than the ordinary
terms of peace.

In reply to a request of the London Daily
Telegraph for an expression of my opinion in this
matter, I made the following statement in its
issue of August 19, 1916:

The post-bellum punishment of atrocities pre-
sents another and very difficult problem. That they
call aloud for summary reparation cannot be
questioned by any just or sane man. But the
punishment of individuals after a treaty of peace,

28 The War and Humanity

unless inflicted upon the clearest cause and under
circumstances that exclude the possibility of the
spirit of vindictive revenge, has this danger — that
it sets a precedent which, if followed in future wars,
may turn civilization into an unending vendetta.
While this is true, the majesty of international law,
which hitherto has mitigated the horrors of war,
would be greatly impaired if the outrageous viola-
tions of the rules of war were condoned. In America
we had a somewhat analogous problem in the mis-
government of our corporations. We found that
men who, as individuals, were incapable of dis-
honesty, were yet indiflerent to the dishonest
practices of corporations with which they were
connected, and of which they were beneficiaries.
To punish the corporate entity did not meet the
evil, and as a result the principle was established
that in such cases guilt was personal, and that the
sins of the corporations could be criminally visited
upon those of its officers who were responsible for
them, and who sought to mask themselves behind
an artificial legal abstraction.

It is not surprising that many thoughtful and
just men are asking whether this principle of
personal guilt should not be visited upon the
oppressive acts of ruthless soldiers who acted for a
nation. But the task of ascertaining the principles
of such criminal liability and the facts in each case
in a stupendous war of this character seems to me
to present appalling difficulties. I venture the
suggestion that, when the war is ended, the Allied
nations should select five distinguished jurists, and
that four neutral nations — say. Holland, Switzer-
land, Spain, and the United States — should each be

The Distress of Nations 29

asked to name a jurist, and that the body thus
formed should consider primarily what offences of
the Central Powers are of such a heinous character
as to justify post-bellum punitive action against
the individuals, and under what circumstances and
in what manner such punitive measures could be
taken. These principles should be as generous as
possible to the vanquished and should be consistent
with the highest interests of civilization, which
imperatively require that the spirit of generosity to
the vanquished, as individuals, should be observed,
lest civilization should retrograde to the barbarity
of those former ages when the vanquished were
pitilessly punished. Lincoln's immortal phrase,
"with malice towards none and with charity for
all," may well be remembered in this connection.
No instance in the war more strikingly raises the
question thus indicated than the sinking of the
Lusitania, which was a deliberate and wanton
sacrifice of non-combatants, and especially of
women and children. To condone this would be a
lasting mischief to the best interests of human
society, and the responsibility of what we call in
America "the man higher up" is in this case
perfectly clear.

These are suggestions, and by no means conclu-
sions, for the whole question seems to me to be one
of the most perplexing that was ever offered to the
publicists and jurists of the world. All that I
intended to note was the growing feeling, which I
have observed both in England and France, that
this great question shall be decided in favour of
punitive action; the tendency is unmistakable, and
it seems to me most important that the publicists

30 The War and Humanity

and jurists of the world should give prompt and
careful consideration to the great moral problem
involved.

In further explanation of my meaning, I may
add that I did not ignore the possibility that the
Governments of Holland, Switzerland, Spain, and
the United States would probably be disinclined
to be represented in such an international criminal
tribunal, but this difficulty could readily be
overcome, in the event of a refusal of those
Governments to participate officially, by the
Allies inviting, from each of the four nations
in question or from other neutral nations, a
distinguished jurist.

It will be noted that my suggestion contemplates
that the Allied nations should have a majority of
the tribunal and this for the obvious reason that
the matter is primarily their concern, for when the
Allies successfully conclude the war, with such an
infinite sacrifice of life and treasure, it should and
will be their right to determine for themselves and
in their own way the manner and character of the
peace. Neutral nations have for many reasons
refused to participate in that which was in its
essence a civil war of civilization. This non-
participation may in many cases be justified and
in all cases is not without some explanation; but

The Distress of Nations 31

the failure to participate makes it unwise that any
neutral nation should intervene, either during the
war or after its close, to suggest, much less dictate,
the nature of the peace. It will do no possible
good. It may do infinite harm.

For this reason, any international tribunal,
which determines the exceedingly difficult moral
question which I am discussing, should control the
decision, as such decision would necessarily be a
part of any terms of peace.

The advantage of having neutral judges on
such a tribunal is that it would give great moral
weight to any decision that might be reached.
Remembering that the whole conscience of
civilization opposes punitive action against in-
dividuals, except under circumstances that impera-
tively require it, it is not likely that a majority
of the proposed tribunal would recommend any
specific action, if two or more neutral judges
were in doubt as to its wisdom and justice.
Certainly the concurrence of the neutral judges
in any course that might be adopted would go
far to commend such punitive action to the
conscience of mankind.

As illustrating the best British sentiment on this
question, I may quote the editorial comment of
the Telegraph upon my interview:

32 The War and Humanity

Obviously we are here face to face with a problem
of great magnitude as well as complexity. When
we have to deal with malefactors such as those who
are responsible for the sinking of the Lusitania and
the murders of Sister Cavell and Captain Fryatt,
the natural human impulse is to demand the
severest punishment which it is in our power to
inflict. The feeling of bitter and unquenchable
indignation is so strong in this country that we have
already heard the Prime Minister stating in the
most explicit terms in the House of Commons the
determination of the British Government to act in
conjunction with our Allies in exacting the severest
penalty. The form of penalty is, of course, another
matter, and here there is room for wide diversity of
opinion. We take it, however, that the British
nation as a whole has made up its mind on the main
point, and that nothing will alter its fixed deter-
mination. In a certain sense we do not hesitate to
consider ourselves the champions of a high moral
law which has been outraged. European civiliza-
tion and future peace would alike be impossible if
it were once conceded that crimes of this magnitude
and atrocity were allowed to go unpunished. "But
the punishment of individuals," says Mr. Beck,
"unless inflicted upon the clearest cause and under
circumstances that exclude the spirit of vindictive
revenge, sets a precedent which, if followed in
future wars, may turn civilization into an unending
vendetta." That is very true, and we certainly
should not lose sight of this point. Men who claim
to vindicate the majesty of morality and law must
act in the spirit of their claim, and must not be
savage executioners or perpetuate bad examples.

The Distress of Nations 33

How, then, are we to see our way clear between these
two opposite principles — reparation for cruel in-
juries and avoidance of purely vindictive vengeance ?
Here Mr. Beck's suggestion is very interesting and
valuable.

We do not know how far it would be possible to
create such a body of lawyers, or whether, indeed,
it would be wise to leave the issue to lawyers alone
without including both statesmen and soldiers.
But the value of Mr. Beck's contribution to the
subject lies in the fact that he sees clearly the two
contrasted policies between which in some fashion or
other we have to steer our way. We must not allow
the guilty to escape; but we must not be bitter in
our revenge. So far as we know anything about our
countrymen, they certainly are not vindictive by
nature. They are more likely to err by leniency
than by a pitiless severity. Perhaps for this very
reason it is the more necessary to lay down in the
clearest possible fashion, and, indeed, to bring the
whole world to witness, that we intend to exact full
and complete reparation. We shall not depart from
Lincoln's principles — "with malice towards none
and with charity for all." But there come crises
in history when a condonation of past offences is
nothing more nor less than moral weakness, and
when inefficiency in exacting punishment becomes a
serious offence against the great laws which guide
all human intercourse.

Undoubtedly the development of means of de-
struction serves to some extent to prevent war and
it is probably true that the war would have been

34 The War and Humanity"

precipitated long since by Prussia but for the
appalling possibilities of such a struggle, which
caused even the callous Prussian militarists to
pause. Prince Bismarck once stated that the
next war between France and Germany would be
of exceptional ferocity, and, fittingly borrowing a
figure from the shambles, he said that on the part
of the victor it would be a case of "bleeding
white." This ghastly metaphor relates to the
habit of butchers drawing the last drop of blood
from certain kinds of cattle to make their flesh
white.

The world has since realized this cold-blooded
prediction of Bismarck, made in confident assur-
ance that it would be France which would be "bled
white " under the butcher's knife. If the full hor-
rors of this war had been realized by the states-
men and soldiers of Vienna and Beriin in July, 19 14,
and especially how great a part of such suffering
their nations would sustain, it is doubtful whether
they would have set on fire the stately fabric of
civilization.

The world has learned the most awful lesson in
its experience and it is probable that wars in future
will not be lightly entered into in view of such
appalling consequences. But the preservation of
a peace that is based upon fear cannot be either

The Distress of Nations 35

durable or just, for such a peace would generally
mean the acquiescence of weaker powers in the
demands, often unjust, of stronger powers.

Before the war, it was believed that the greatest
panacea for the admitted evil of war was inter-
national arbitration. Enlightened statesmen had
faith in it, which in the light of recent events has
proved to be somewhat misplaced. Undoubtedly
between nations which are reasonably pacific in
their purposes and desire nothing that is not just,
international arbitration is an effective method of
adjusting disputes. But it can have no efficacy
where one of two contending nations or groups of
nations has no desire to be just. No individual or
nation will ever arbitrate a question where he or it
realizes that the antagonist is attempting to inflict
upon him a wanton and deliberate wrong.

The great truth of this war, and the great limita-
tion of the policy of international arbitration, is
that war is not the worst evil that can befall men.
Injustice is infinitely worse. Not every peace is,
therefore, preferable to war. There can be peace
with dishonour; and multipHed death is better
than multiplied disgrace. Would it not be in-
finitely better that civilization should perish alto-
gether rather than have injustice permanently
enthroned through force ?

36 The War and Humanity

Great as has been the evil of the love of war — and
it has immeasurably cursed humanity and retarded
its progress — yet it were infinitely worse if the
abject fear of war should become the shield of
injustice. While the goal of humanity should
ever be justice through peace — and to make its
path straight and smooth, mutual respect and fair
dealing between nation and nation should ever
be assiduously cultivated — yet if both are not
immediately attainable, it is infinitely better to
have justice through war than injustice through
peace, for a peace, which deliberately sacrifices
justice in a spirit of cowardice and enthrones
wanton wrong, retards progress, and sins against
the conscience of mankind. Of the policy of non-
intervention under any circumstances, Ruskin has
finely said that it "is as selfish and cruel as the
worst frenzy of conquest, and differs from it only
in being not only malignant but dastardly." In
this saying of possibly the noblest ethical teacher
of our age extreme American pacifists could
profitably take a lesson.

Even the most sanguine advocate of inter-
national arbitration must distinguish between
justiciable and non-justiciable causes and admit
that the latter are beyond the scope of the remedy.
Justiciable questions are generally those of a

The Distress of Nations 37

minor character about which nations would not
in any event go to war; while the non-justiciable
questions are those as to which international
arbitration is generally impotent to prevent a
conflict. Thus, the great' historic policies of
nations or the instinctive movements of races,
slow and resistless as glaciers, could as little be
checked by international agreement as the people
of Chamouni could stay the onward course of the
Mer de Glace.

Everyone should recognize the fact that inter-
national arbitration is of value in providing the
procedure of peace, when and only when questions
which admit of reasonable argument arise between
nations and the disputants are equally desirous
of ascertaining the justice of the issue. Lord
Russell of Killowen, in an address which he made
at the American Bar Association at Saratoga in
1896, after referring to the many instances of suc-
cessful international arbitration in the nineteenth
century, which then numbered nearly seventy-
five, thus well defined the instances where such
arbitration is a practicable remedy:

First, where the right in dispute depends upon
the ascertainment of facts honestly in dispute;
second, where, the facts being ascertained, the
right depends upon the application of some

38 The War and Humanity

tangible principle of international law; third,
where the dispute is one which may properly be
adjusted by mutual concessions which do not
involve vital interests or national honour.

No one will question the value of the remedy in
such controversies; but it is in this very class of
cases that the normal nation would in any event
be indisposed to appeal to war. In such instances,
the mediation of a mutually friendly power has
proven as effective as a formal arbitration and is
often much more readily resorted to.

The final suggestion of a league to enforce
peace is the latest remedy for war and the one that
is at the present time most prominently engaging
the thoughts of enlightened citizens of different
countries. It has had warm support both in
England and the United States and undoubtedly
has much to commend it. Its essential idea is that
civilized nations shall by a league compel the
resort to arbitration in all justiciable controversies.

The idea, like every idea connected with the
world-old problem of war and peace, has little
novelty. The idea of arbitration is at least as old
as the Greek Republics. According to Thucydides,
the King of Sparta pronounced all war unlaw-
ful if the attacked were willing "to answer for
his acts before a tribunal of arbiters." Even

The Distress of Nations 39

formal agreements to arbitrate are of very ancient
origin, for Argos and Lacedasmon had a fifty-
year treaty of alliance to arbitrate all differences.
Even the idea of creating a new sovereign authority
above otherwise sovereign nations, by compelling
compliance with the decision of arbitrators is not
new. William Penn, the great apostle of peace,
in his work called An Essay toward the Present and
Future Peace of Europe, suggested as his remedy
for war an international court of arbitration,
whose

judgment should be made so binding that if any
Government offers its case for decision and does
not then abide by it, the other Governments par-
ties to the tribunal shall compel it.

However, the novelty or lack of novelty of the
proposed league of peace has nothing to do with
its possible efficacy. Its fundamental principle
is that all nations have a common interest in peace
and should co-operate to maintain it by jointly
compelling every nation to submit its grievances to
the impartial decision of an international tribunal.
It is in effect an attempt in a rudimentary form to
confederate the world and to merge all existing
nations for certain world-wide purposes of interna-
tional justice in a new governmental entity. The

40 The War and Humanity

chief value of this movement is that it emphasizes,
as it seems to me most desirable, the joint respon-
sibility of all nations for the peace of the world.

The curse of civilization and one of the most
fruitful causes of war is the selfish spirit of national-
ism, which declines to accept a share in the
common burdens of civilization. This is not
altogether unnatural, for the horrors of war are so
stupendous that any nation, which is not directly
involved in a particular quarrel, is generally in-
disposed to share in its burdens and sufferings.
Moreover, many wars have resulted from questions
which wholly or at least largely concerned the
belligerent nations, and as to which other nations
may reasonably disclaim any direct responsibility.
To have a world-war every time two nations may
quarrel would be intolerable.

But the weakness of this spirit of detachment
is that many quarrels, that arise between two
nations, however superficially they may seem to be
peculiar to them, often raise moral questions which
vitally concern civilization. These moral issues un-
doubtedly differ in degree and it would be absurd
to contend that any nation is bound to implicate
itself in every quarrel involving some minor moral
issue. But as civilization becomes more closely
interwoven by steam and electricity, the issues

The Distress of Nations 41

which are now of sufficient importance to result
in war often involve a moral issue of general im-
portance as to which no great power can wholly
divest itself of responsibility.

Take, for example, the present war. In the case
of England, it was the invasion of Belgium that
brought it into the conflict; and the horrors of
that invasion have been such that we are too
apt to conclude that this was the cause of the
war.

The refusal of Austria, instigated by Germany, to
arbitrate a very simple question with Servia was
the precipitating cause of the war. Servia had
virtually yielded to every demand of Austria, many
of which were plainly unreasonable ; but it naturally
refused, upon the broadest considerations both of
sovereignty and universal justice, to agree that
partisan Austrian officials should try the guilt or
innocence of Servian citizens in the courts of
Servia. But as this question of guilt and inno-
cence ought to be determined by some dispassion-
ate tribunal, it was willing to refer the question of
the method of such trial to the Hague tribunal.
Austria refused and commenced the war.

Every civilized nation had a direct and vital
interest in this quarrel, and a consequent responsi-
bility, for the action of the Central Powers was

42 The War and Humanity

the clearest disloyalty to civilization. It not
merely attempted to crush the sovereignty of a
smaller state but it refused to refer a perfectly jus-
ticiable question to the arbitrament of the Hague
tribunal. Under the theory of the proposed league
of peace, it would have been the duty of every
party to the league to join with England, France,
and Russia in supporting the claims of Servia and
resisting the arrogant demands of Austria and
Germany. Theoretically this is admirable and in
the instance cited would undoubtedly have pre-
vented the titanic war. If even England and the
United States had promptly joined with France
and Russia in demanding that Austria should
arbitrate her remaining question with Servia, the
world today would not be witnessing a very deluge
of blood. And yet if nations, which were far
detached from Servia and had little interest in
Austro-Servian grievances as such, had attempted
to implicate their several peoples in a war, whose
superficial origin was so remote, they would have
found considerable difficulty under present con-
ditions of thought in securing the necessary support
of their peoples. The world is, I fear, some ages
behind such recognition of joint responsibility.

If, however, this sense of common responsibi-
lity can be developed in civilization; if every

The Distress of Nations 43

nation shall feel that it must bear its share of
the burden of preserving a just and durable peace,
then war might be prevented in most contro-
versies, for there is no nation, however great in
power, that would challenge in physical conflict all
the other powers of civilization. Indeed, if such
co-operative effort could ever be secured, the
coercion' by armies and navies might not be
necessary, for the league of nations could probably
compel the offending nation to maintain peace
with equal effectiveness by an economic boycott.
No nation would wish to make war, if all the
leading nations should desist from commercial
and social intercourse with such nation. With
the conscience of mankind developed to the point
of common responsibility, disarmament is not a
dream, but until then it is for the pacific states a
dangerous mirage.

A further weakness of the League of Peace
lies in the limitations of human nature; for I
fear that if it were ever formed, it would
share the fate of every government, which while
theoretically united, is yet divided into political
groups which may contend against each other
not on ethical but material lines.

No government has yet been able to make
all men think alike; and as they do not and

44 The War and Humanity

their standards of morality vary in character,
and their vital interests are divergent, a tendency
necessarily results to break into groups of kindred
thoughts or interests.

I fear, therefore, that any league of peace, if it
were seriously attempted after the conclusion of
this war, would one day share the fate of its
great predecessor, the Holy Alliance, which was
founded at the end of the Napoleonic wars. I
appreciate that the fatal defect of the Holy Al-
liance was that its principal purpose was to
strangle democracy and that it thus warred
against the freedom of civilization.

But even if the purpose of a league of peace
were wholly altruistic, yet as different groups of
nations have different views of policy and very
different standards of morality, the tendency to
break into groups would soon develop and would
eventually lead to finesse, intrigue, and ultimate
schism. We would thus have a civil war in civiliza-
tion happening as suddenly as there were causes
of quarrel large enough to split the nations of the
league into constituent groups.

The proposed League of Peace is doing a useful
work in educating the masses of each nation as to
the common responsibility of all nations for the
peace of the world, and the duty of each nation to

The Distress of Nations 45

bear its share of the burden. In no country is this
vitally important lesson more necessary than in
the United States.

May not the cause of peace be best advanced by
nations of kindred ideals and substantially identi-
cal interests co-operating in some form in defence
of the peace of mankind ? John Fiske, the Ameri-
can historian, forcefully said that perpetual peace
would only be a dream until the pacific nations
armed as well as the bellicose. This is a hard
saying, but, so far as it goes, a true one. It, how-
ever, would not in itself secure perpetual peace
unless the pacific nations, by which I mean the
nations that desire justice, shall not only be armed
but shall co-operate by deeds as well as words to
maintain justice in civilization.

The best approach at the present time to an
ultimate league of peace would be for nations,
with common traditions, ideals, conceptions of
morality and interests, to combine their strength
to maintain justice in civilization.

One of the most distinguished educators and
notable thinkers of the United States, Dr. Charles
W. Eliot, formerly President of Harvard College,
in an open letter to the Boston Herald on March
12, 1916, emphasized most vigorously this sug-
gestion that the first step to the proposed league

46 The War and Humanity

of peace should be a preliminary grouping of the
Powers which have ideals and interests in common.
He appreciated, as any student of our history
must appreciate, the great difficulty there would
be in persuading the people of the United States to
abandon even seemingly its policy of opposition
to "entangling alliances." But the fact that a
great student of our history, like Dr. Eliot, is
willing to advocate such an alignment of the
United States with the great progressive demo-
cracies of the world indicates that the prodigious
upheaval of the present day is slowly tending to
make the American nation realize that it cannot
always stand alone but that some day it must
recognize and co-operate in some form with its
natural associates in the family of nations. This
does not necessarily mean an entangling alliance,
by which I assume the Fathers of the Republic
meant an alliance for offence and defence without
respect to the particular matter which might call
for common action.

The American nation will never agree in my
judgment to unite offensively and defensively
with any nation irrespective of the particular
contingency which calls for co-operative effort.
England has shown that there is a clear distinction
between an entangling alliance and an entente

The Distress of Nations 47

cordiale. The former requires co-operative effort
and leaves no discretion. The latter is a dis-
position rather than a contractual undertaking.
The entente cordiale between England and France
did not require England as matter of contractual
obligation to align herself with France in the pre-
sent war and England declined to do so at the begin-
ning of the controversy. Nevertheless the friendly
disposition toward France, as a great democracy
of common aims and ideals, was of the most
vital importance and impelled England to take
part in the war far more effectually than any
written covenant might have done.

Similarly the United States, without departing
from its policy of opposition to entangling alli-
ances, could recognize an entente cordiale with
the two great democracies, which are now
fighting so bravely for the principles of civi-
Hzation. It could do this with reasonable effec-
tiveness without the Siamese-twin-like ligature
of a formal alliance and without any express
covenant.

Dr. Eliot apparently contemplates a closer
alliance but the wisdom of such alliance is at
present academic, for the American people would
never under present conditions of thought consent
to it. Although thus academic, the reasons which

48 The War and Humanity

Dr. Eliot gives may justly appeal to the considera-
tion of every thoughtful American as suggestive
of future possibiUties if at present not susceptible
of practical realization. Let me quote one portion
only of Dr. Eliot's noteworthy article:

Permanent and fundamental interests of the
United States would then be served by entering
into the alliance above described; but since, to
enter into such an alliance would involve assuming
grave responsibilities in Europe as well as in Ameri-
ca, and thus abandoning the traditional American
policies of isolation and neutrality, it is necessary to
discuss not only the interests of the American
people, but their duties. The American liberties
are derived historically from German, Dutch,
English, and French sources. They represent
not only struggles and sufferings on American soil,
but long conflicts and immense sacrifices in western
Europe to set up and strive toward the ideals of
individual liberty, public justice, and human
brotherhood. Americans recognize their immeas-
urable indebtedness to their own ancestors on
this continent during any or all of the last three
centuries, and are paying the indebtedness by
preserving, improving, and passing down the
ancestors' work. People who have read history
from the wars of the Dutch Republic know how
much America is indebted to Dutch struggles for
liberty, to German Protestantism, to Magna
Charta, and the English commonwealth, to Hugue-
not heroism and to French insistence, through
many woes and reverses, on liberty, equality, and

The Distress of Nations 49

fraternity. The American Republic pays these
obligations in part by standing as a striking example
of the strength, security, industrial efficiency,
and prosperity which are attainable under a regime
of large public and private liberty; and with this
partial payment both America and Europe have
heretofore been content. The present war has,
however, revealed dangers for public liberty in
Europe and the Americas which were not realized
by the freer European nations or by the American
peoples until 1914 and 1915. All persons who
observe and reflect can now perceive that the
immense military power of Germany, Austria-
Hungary, and Turkey skilfully combined, scientifi-
cally directed by Prussia, and ruthlessly used,
threatens the public liberties of the rest of Europe
and indeed, of all the world. Under analogous
circumstances, in private life any brave and gene-
rous man who felt under serious obligations to a
neighbour would go to that neighbour's help if
he saw him in dire distress; and the more acute the
distress, and the greater the risk run in bringing
help, the surer it would be that the brave debtor
would take the risk and relieve the neighbour
before it was too late. Therein he would be doing
a plain duty, as well as obeying a generous impulse
and serving his own highest interest. The same
moral principles apply equally to national action.

Now that the long-prepared foreign policies,
state objects, and military methods of Germany
and Austria-Hungary have been made plain in
the sight of all men, the neutral attitude of the
United States is no longer satisfactory to Ameri-
cans who give attention to the chief events of this

50 The War and Humanity

sudden collapse of civilization. It is time for
lovers of public liberty and justice to cease to be
merely lookers-on at the prodigious catastrophe.
It is time to express forcibly their convictions as
to the side on which the right lies, and to make
ready to take part in the terrible strife. It is
time to feel and speak strongly about something
more than the rights of neutrals. It is time for the
deepest-rooted and strongest of republics to con-
sider how it can best bring direct help to harassed
and bleeding France and Great Britain. It is
time for all the Americas to take sides openly
with the European peoples who are now resisting
military despotism and dangerous national_ambi-
tions, and to discharge their obligations to the
liberty-loving generations of the past and the
future.

The great lesson of this war for the United
States has been this awakened sense of a greater
responsibility to civilization than that of which it
has hitherto dreamed. From the beginning a
detached nation, the spirit of isolation has always
powerfully influenced its policies. This detach-
ment was accentuated by its severance from the
mother empire and seemingly had an authority
in the doctrine of Washington that we should
avoid any entanglement in European politics.

As I shall venture to show later, Washington,
however, only predicated this doctrine upon the
conditions and during the period of our infancy.

The Distress of Nations 51

Not only has that period of infancy passed, but
the steamship, the railroad, the telegraph, and the
cable have brought to an end the geographical
detachment which existed in his day and which
powerfully influenced his avowedly temporary
policy of isolation. An ever increasing number of
the American people are realizing this momentous
change in our position in the family of nations.
From the beginning of this great war, a vastly
predominating majority have sympathized wholly
and freely with the cause of the Allies, because
they believed that cause was just and involved the
vital and noblest interests of civilization.

At first, owing to this traditional policy of isola-
tion, we did not feel that we had any higher duty
than that of sympathy, a sympathy not merely
academic but which soon became an attitude of
benevolent neutrality. But this policy of isolation
is not intelligible to our natural allies, the democ-
racies of Europe. They cannot distinguish it from
pure selfishness. While this book was in press,
the author went to France and England, and in
ten speeches, delivered in London, Glasgow, Man-
chester, and Paris, endeavoured to explain to his
foreign audiences the difficulty of America in play-
ing its part in this world struggle, and he had the
satisfaction of knowing that his mission was not

52 The War and Humanity

wholly in vain, and that many leaders of thought
in England and France realized more clearly the
difficulty of America's position, and the good will
to their cause of a majority of its people. One of
these speeches is printed at the close of this vol-
ume, under the title of "America and the Allies,'*
and those who read that address, and also my dis-
cussion of Washington's foreign policy (pp. 167-202)
will find a fuller statement of the reasons why
Dr. Eliot's idea of an entente cordiale, and the pro-
posed world co-operation of the League of Peace,
will find a serious obstacle in the United States,
as long as it adheres to its traditional policy of
isolation.

The future of civilization will depend in large
measure upon the helpful and sympathetic co-
operation of England and the United States, the
two great divisions of the English-speaking race;
and it would be an immeasurable calamity if any
thing happens in this war which would in any way
prevent or impair such co-operation.

It was well said by Lord Russell, of Killowen,
that "we represent the great English-speaking
community, the communities occupying a large
space of the surface of the earth, combining at
once territorial dominion, political influence, and
intellectual force" — and the Lord Chief Justice

The Distress of Nations 53

might have added, moral power— " greater than
history records in the case of any other people."

Let us hope that at no distant day the three
great democracies of civilization, England, France,
and the United States, will work in unison for the
peace of the world, and is it wholly a dream that
to these may be added a fourth, the Republic of
Germany ? With its efficiency and discipline, Ger-
many could readily become one of the most potent
and noble democracies of the world. As such,
despite all present bitterness, it would be welcomed
into the full fellowship of the free nations.

II

THE SUBMARINE CONTROVERSY

'And pity, like a naked newborn babe,
Striding the blast, or, Heaven's cherubim, horshd
Upon the sightless couriers of the air.
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye.
That tears shall drown the wind."

— Shakespeare.

55

II

THE SUBMARINE CONTROVERSY

There are two political organizations, which by-
reason of the vast influence which each exerts upon
millions of intelligent beings, and their detached yet
cosmopolitan character, enjoyed at the beginning
of the world war an exceptional moral prestige in
civiHzation. In the estimation of countless thou-
sands each has failed to meet the expectations of
the world in its greatest moral crisis. How far is
this disappointment justified in the case of the
United States?

If it has failed it is not because its people did
not understand the gravity of the moral crisis, but
because in its foreign relations there is no real
coercive public opinion to shape its policies. All
is left to its President for the time being, and it
has been the pitiful misfortune of the United
States in this crisis of civilization to be betrayed
by incompetent and timid leadership. Next to
Bethman-Hollweg's "scrap of paper" phrase the
world reserves its greatest scorn for the " too
proud to fight " utterance of President Wilson.

57

58 The War and Humanity

A year has passed since the world heard
with horror of the sinking of the Lusitania, the
greatest tragedy of the seas. As the anniversary
approached, Americans everywhere recalled the
crime with feelings of deepest detestation, mingled
with the keenest humiliation. The latter feeling
sounded the deepest note in their souls. The
foul crime of the Lusitania had not yet been
disavowed, and it will never be fully redressed
unless the watery grave of the Lusitania shall
prove to be the lasting grave of the Hohen-
zollem dynasty. That will be an expiation
worthy of .^schylus or Shakespeare.

The American people grieve for the victims of
the Lusitania and for those near to them, to whom
has come the infinite but common tragedy of the
"vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is
still. " They recall with horror that many of these
victims were little children, and to him, who caused
this massacre of the innocents, whether he wear
an admiral's stripes or an imperial crown, will
one day come the condemnation spoken nearly
two thousand years ago:

And whoso shall offend one of these little ones,
which believe in me, it were better for him that a mill-
stone were hanged about his neck and he were drowned
in the depth of the sea.

The Submarine Controversy 59

Charles Lamb has said that the tragedy of King
Lear was unactable for the reason that the sublime
third act, the greatest in all tragedies in its poig-
nant pathos, so exhausted the capacity for sym-
pathy, that the remaining two acts fell upon
deadened souls. Similarly, the accumulating hor-
rors of this war of nations have so stupefied the
hearts of Americans that the dominant emotion
of their souls, as they recall this crowning crime
of the century, is not only grief for the victims,
but the deeper sorrow, which they feel in the
impairment of their prestige as a nation.

When the author spent the summer of 19 16 in
England and France, he was privileged to meet
many distinguished statesmen and soldiers of both
nations. Their surprise and disappointment in
the failure of America to exact full and swift
atonement for this murder of American women
and children was manifest. When they spoke,
it was to express deep appreciation of what in-
dividual Americans had done; but when pressed
to express their opinion of its Government, they
gave the impression that America as the land of
ideals had for them ceased to exist.

If moral values are of greater moment than ma-
terial prosperity, then this bouleversement is the
greatest calamity that the United States could

6o The War and Humanity

suffer. If its great cities had been destroyed, and
economic ruin had swept the land as a devouring
hurricane, the injury would have been less, for
America could rebuild its cities and restore its
material prosperity, but the honour of a nation,
once compromised, is not so easily regained.

What shall it profit a nation to gain the whole
world and lose its own soul in the opinion of
mankind ?

Let us consider to what extent this feeling is
justified by the facts. In doing so, candour and
interest alike require plain speech. It is not a
time for self-complacency. The nobler spirit of
America has been dulled by too many Peck-
sniffian platitudes during the last two years, and
the rising spirit of indignation among true Ameri-
cans will sooner or later demand a fearless appre-
ciation of what has happened, and a resolute
purpose to vindicate its honour.

When the world war broke out, no principle of in-
ternational law was more securely established than
that war should be so conducted that injury and
death should be spared to non-combatants so
far as was humanly possible. The principle was
as old as civilization. The idea that it was of
modern origin is largely due to the fact that the
horrors of the Thirty Years' War, with its sack

The Submarine Controversy 6i

of Magdeburg and other atrocities, — a fitting
parallel to the rape of Belgium, — caused the
great philosopher and jurist, Grotius, in 1625,
to define in his classic treatise, " De jure belli
et pads,'' this principle of humanity, which in
times of war marks the chief line of demarcation
between savagery and civilization.

Grotius abundantly proved by citations from
Cicero, Sallust, and Seneca that to spare non-
combatants and treat even captured soldiers with
humanity and moderation was a basic principle of
civilization. The excesses of the Circus Maximus
and the Coliseum marked the baser days of the
later Csesars. In the application of this principle,
Grotius quoted Seneca as holding that, "in the
calamities of war, children are exempted and
spared on the score of their age, and women from
respect to their sex."

In his noble oration in defence of Ligarius,
Cicero voiced to no less a judge than the greatest
of the Caesars the virtue of moderation to the
vanquished and uttered the immortal truth that
"man can approach no nearer to the gods than in
giving safety to men."

The principle, thus recognized even in the times
of the earlier Cassars, received a powerful impetus
with the advance of civilization and the growth

62 The War and Humanity

of Christianity, and in the days of chivalry be-
came one of general recognition. No one can
assert that this ideal was always observed in the
passionate strife of the Middle Ages but it was an
ideal, consistently avowed, which generally moder-
ated the excesses of war. The mediaeval knight
disdained to use his sword upon a non-combatant ;
but now, to quote Burke's sad lament: "The age
of chivalry is gone . . . and the glory of Europe is
departed. "

Such was the undoubted law of civilization at
the outbreak of this war. It is no answer to say
that international law is a misnomer and means
little more than the etiquette of nations, to be
observed or disregarded according to the pleas-
ure or necessities of the combatant, for of this
and other great principles of humanity, Alexander
Hamilton eloquently said :

The sacred rights of man are not to be searched
for in old documents and musty records. They are
written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of
human nature by the hand of Divinity itself and
can never be erased by mortal power.

The clearest recognition of this principle is
evidenced by the fact that for five months after
the war began it was never asserted by any

The Submarine Controversy 63

belligerent that any right existed to slaughter
indiscriminately non-combatants, whether citi-
zens of belligerent nations or not, in order to
destroy an enemy's commerce. The first intima-
tion to the contrary was an authorized interview
by Admiral Tirpitz, given to the world on the
eve of Christmas — God save the mark! — in
which that chief of pirates, whom history has
recorded, — for no buccaneer of the Spanish main
ever did a fouler deed than the destruction of the
Lusitania — stated that it was his intention to tor-
pedo every merchant vessel belonging to the Allies,
and, directing his challenge to America, he asked,
"What will America then say?" Had President
Wilson then called upon Germany to affirm or
disaffirm this threat of its chief naval commander
under penalty of an immediate severance of
diplomatic relations, this black and shameful
chapter of history would probably never have
been written.

.This was followed on February 4, 19 15, by a
proclamation, which established a war zone around
the British Isles and said :

Every enemy merchant ship found in the said
war zone will be destroyed without its being always
possible to avert the dangers threatening the crews and
passengers.

64 The War and Humanity

America accepted the challenge in the most
unequivocal manner, when its Government on
February lo, 19 15, called the attention of the
German Government "to the very serious possi-
bilities of the course of action apparently con-
templated," and added as a warning that if such
cause of action caused

the death of any American citizens, it would be
difficult for the United States to view the act in
any other light than as an indefensible violation of
neutral rights, Jor which the Government would he
concerned to hold the German Government to a strict
accountability, and to take any steps it might he neces-
sary to take to safeguard the .American lives and
liberty and to secure to American citizens the full
enjoyment of their acknowledged rights on the
high seas.

Thus was the issue joined with brave words, and
if the Wilson Administration had then begun to
make adequate preparations to vindicate these
words with deeds, it is reasonably possible that
the Lusitania would never have sunk.

Whether the German Government was indiffer-
ent to the hostility of America or misled by the
assurance which its then Secretary of State is said
to have given to the Austrian Ambassador that its
notes were to be taken in a Pickwickian sense and

The Submarine Controversy 65

as chiefly intended for home consumption, we do
not know, but it is certain that the German Gov-
ernment shortly thereafter determined to test the
sincerity of these emphatic warnings.

On March the 28th, 191 5, it sank the British
steamer, the Falaba, without any warning and
destroyed a number of Hves, including that of an
American citizen.

It followed this a month later by firing on the
American flag and sinking the American steamer,
the Gulflight, and three more of its citizens be-
came the victims to their piracy.

On May 24th a German submarine torpedoed
the American steamer, the Nebraskan, and the
German Foreign Office then assumed its attitude
of almost contemptuous indifference by sending to
Washington the extraordinary explanation that
the commander of the submarine could not
see because of the gathering twilight what the
nationality of the vessel was and therefore tor-
pedoed the unknown ship on the assumption that
it must be a belligerent ship, and it was sardonic-
ally added that on this account the shot must not
be regarded as intended for the American flag but
simply as "an unfortunate accident."

On April the 22nd the German Government de-
termined to direct on American soil the actions of
5

66 The War and Humanity

American citizens and in defiance of the principles
laid down by President Wilson. At that time a
large number of American citizens were preparing,
in full confidence that their rights would be vindi-
cated by their Government, to sail on the Lusi-
tania, and the German Embassy, by an advertise-
ment dated April 22nd and published May the
first, warned the citizens that if they sailed on the
Lusitania they would do so "at their own risk."
This meant and could only mean that the German
Government forbade American citizens to do that
which their Government had told them they had
a right to do.

This violation of all diplornatic proprieties and
virtual defiance of our Government on its own soil
was intensified when the German Foreign Office,
after the Lusitania had been sunk, ironically ex-
pressed its regret that Americans felt more in-
clined to trust to English promises than to pay
attention to the warnings from the German side.

When Genet made a similar but far less repre-
hensible attempt to appeal over the head of the
President to the American people. President
Washington, although his country was then in its
infancy and ill prepared to defend its rights,
promptly demanded his recall. De Lome went
home because of one slur on President McKinley

The Submarine Controversy 67

in a private letter, while Sackville-West was given
his passports because he expressed an opinion in
another private letter how an American citizen
should vote. America compelled Spain to dis-
avow the murder of the crew of the Virginius,
and later sought to compel Mexico on short
notice to salute its flag because American officers
had been arrested by overzealous Mexican sub-
ordinates.

If Ambassador Bernstorff had been given his
passports then, it is again probable that the
Lusitania would never have sunk.

The Wilson Administration was not unaware of
the gross impropriety of the action of the German
Embassy, because it called its attention to it as a
"surprising irregularity," but with this very mild
rebuke, it permitted the German Ambassador to
remain, and he has since influenced the action of
the Washington Government as no other foreign
diplomat has ever done. Emboldened by his im-
munity, his military and naval attaches. Von
Papen and Boy-Ed, outraged "every principle of
diplomatic intercourse by making the United
States a base of belligerent operations.

The impropriety of the German Embassy was
emphasized when Dr. Dernburg, the semi-official
representative of the Kaiser in America, cynically

68 The War and Humanity

added to the formal warning of the German
Embassy :

If after such warning and publication of the fact
that a ship contained contraband, as I have sug-
gested, people want to travel in her, it is their own
affair. Nobody can prevent their committing sui-
cide if they wish.

This brutally cynical remark also went unre-
buked ; until, with his exultant justification of the
massacre of the Lusitania, public opinion — and
not a laggard Government — drove him from the
United States, whose hospitality he had so shame-
fully abused.

The Lusitania sailed on May ist with 2500 non-
combatants on board; and on May 7th, without
the slightest warning or an opportunity to escape,
it was cruelly and treacherously torpedoed, and
over one thousand men, women, and children were
thrown to the waves.

Two days later the President of the United
States spoke in the city of Philadelphia and the
entire world listened with bated breath to what
the first citizen of American would say in relation
to this outrage. He had only to lead. The
American people were then ready to follow.

Mr, Wilson knew and must have known that
every syllable he then uttered would be neces-

The Submarine Controversy 69

sarily construed as having a direct reference to his
attitude and that of his country. He must have
been conscious of this, and this was his message
to the world :

Is not there such a thing as a man being too
proud to fight? There is such a thing as a nation
being so right that it does not need to convince
others by force that it is right.

The German Government thereafter not un-
naturally paid little attention to successive notes,
which it and the world generally regarded as more
voluble than valuable.

On May 13, 19 15, Mr. Wilson did protest
against this inhuman outrage, but all that was
said was that

the Imperial German Government will not expect
the Government of the United States to omit any
word or any act necessary to the performance of its
sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the United
States and its citizens and of safeguarding their
free exercise and enjoyment.

Thereafter no ' ' word ' ' was omitted. The Presi-
dent mobilized the dictionary most effectively and
vigorously opposed German submarines with a
typewriter.

On May 28, 191 5, the German Government
justified the sinking of the Lusitania upon grounds,

70 The War and Humanity

all of which were untenable and some of which were
false in fact.

On June 9th, Mr. Lansing addressed a note to the
German Government and demanded assurances

that the Imperial Government will adopt the meas-
ures necessary to put these principles into practice
in respect to the safeguarding of American lives
and American ships.

While this ineffective interchange of notes was
taking place, the German Government was in no
unmeaning way indicating by its acts its inten-
tion to carry on the policy of frightfulness on the
high seas.

On June 28, 1915, it sank the Armenian and
killed eleven American citizens, and nineteen days
later it attacked the great trans-Atlantic passenger
ship, the Orduna, and only a missed shot prevented
a repetition of the Lusitania massacre.

On July 2 1st the German Government, having
persistently refused to disavow the Lusitania
outrage, Secretary Lansing addressed to it an-
other note, in which the rights of American citi-
zens as neutrals were again emphasized and which
concluded by saying that

friendship itself prompts it [the United States] to
say to the Imperial Government that repetition by

The Submarine Controversy 71

commanders of German naval vessels of acts in
contravention of these rights must be regarded by
the Government of the United States, when they
affect American citizens, as deliberately unfriendly.

It will be noted that in this demand President
Wilson commenced to modify at least the grounds
of his contention by omitting the previous wholly
creditable assertion of the rights of non-combatants
on general principles of humanity and by restrict-
ing it to the rights of American citizens to be in
any event immune.

This modification went far to compromise the
principle upon which the whole contention of
America was necessarily based. This distinction
between the rights of neutrals and the rights of
non-combatants was not an inadvertence. The
note was prepared by President Wilson with the
utmost care, and it is said that he spent some
hours in considering whether he would use the
words "deliberately unfriendly" or "an unfriendly
act," although it would take a mediaeval scholiast
to recognize the precise distinction.

While these innocuous notes were being ex-
changed, Admiral von Tirpitz and his subordinate
pirates were not idle, for on August the 19th they
destroyed the Arabic and killed some more
American citizens. This act and the subsequent

72 The War and Humanity

inaction of the Wilson Administration raised so
strong a storm of protest among the American
people that the sagacious Bernstorff evidently ad-
vised his home Government that while it could
trifle with some American officials, it could not
thus deal with impunity with the American peo-
ple, and thereupon the German Foreign Office
attempted to give the impression that the sinking
of the Arabic had been contrary to authority, and
it authorized its Ambassador at Washington to
give this Government a solemn pledge that

liners will not be sunk by our submarines without
warning and without providing for the safety of
the lives of non-combatants, provided that the
liners do not try to escape or offer resistance.

This pledge was given not in Bernstorff's
language but in formal terms conveyed through
him to Washington by the German Foreign
Office. The pledge was absolute and without
restriction as to the war zone. And yet in its note
of May 5, 191 6, as we shall presently see, the
German Foreign Office denied that any such
assurance was ever given as to " Hners " in the
so-called war zone.

This was not the only pledge, for Secretary
Lansing states in his later note of April i8th, that

The Submarine Controversy 73

again and again the Imperial Government has given
its solemn assurances to the Government of the
United States that at least passenger ships would not
thus be dealt with.

As recently as February last it promised this
except as to armed merchantmen, but these
promises proved to be only "scraps of paper."

The assurances that were thus given that the
attempted torpedoing of the Orduna and the
torpedoing of the Arabic and the Ancona were
in violation of instructions would belong to low
comedy, if it were not in results the subject of
high tragedy. Remembering the incalculable
consequences that might befall Germany, if the
American Government had proceeded to vindi-
cate the rights of its citizens and the principles of
humanity, it is altogether incredible that any
commander of a submarine would have acted in
violation of the instructions given to him by his
Government. Remembering the discipline of the
German army, navy, and civil government, it is
morally certain that whatever assurances have been
given through diplomats or whatever ships have
been sunk by submarine commanders have been
by direct authority of the respective heads of these
departments and with the knowledge of the su-
preme War Lord. When therefore, assurances were

74 The War and Humanity

given to this country that no more liners should
be sunk without warning, and when submarine
commanders subsequently proceeded to sink such
ships without warning, the conclusion is reasonable
that the same responsible ruler and War Lord,
who gave the pledge through his chancellor, permit-
ted its violation by his submarine commanders.

The false pledge, thus given to America to lull
it into a false sense of security, was accompanied
by another policy of sinister significance. In the
United States, public indignation was steadily
increasing at this ineffective exchange of notes;
and the German Ambassador, thereupon, insidi-
ously suggested to Secretary Lansing that the
policy of publishing notes should cease and that
further communication should be conducted by
confidential "conversations," which left little
scope for the influence of public opinion either in
Germany or in the United States. Thus was the
policy of "pitiless publicity" vindicated in a grave
matter! Undoubtedly diplomatic communica-
tions may often both advantageously and properly
be conducted in camera, but this controversy had
hitherto been conducted in the forum of public
opinion and its sudden transfer to "secret diplo-
macy" by the great apostle of "pitiless publicity"
was but another surprising change of policy.

The Submarine Controversy 75

While these confidential "conversations" were
proceeding, the horror of the Lusitania was re-
peated on November 7, 19 15, when a submarine,
carrying the Austrian flag, sank the Ancona, and
nine more American citizens were sacrificed.
Once again the familiar excuse was given that the
commander had acted in excess of his instructions
and it was agreed that he should be punished. If
he has ever been punished, the fact and nature of
his punishment have yet to be made public. His
punishment may have been to be decorated, as was
the commander of the submarine which sank the
Lusitania. In this connection it may be noted
that so far as the public knows all inquiries of
the American Government as to the character of
the punishment meted out to the commanders,
who sank the Ancona and the Sussex, remain
unanswered.

On September 30th, another passenger steamer,
the Persia, was sunk, and another American life,
that of an official of the United States, was sacri-
ficed. As the Persia presumably did not commit
suicide by torpedoing itself, and as the scene of
disaster was beyond the region of mines, it is not a
very rash assumption that either a German or an
Austrian submarine sank it.

After these confidential conversations had pro-

76 The War and Humanity

ceeded for about six months more, announcement
was loudly and triumphantly made in February
1 91 6, that the submarine controversy had been
finally settled. The settlement would have been
consummated but for the fact that the issue of
the status of armed merchantmen arose, and the
proposed settlement was again postponed. Had
it been consummated, it would have involved
on the part of our country a partial compromise
of the principle of humanity involved.

As that compromise may yet be revived in the
tortuous course of future negotiations, it is import-
ant that its nature should be clearly recognized,
so that public opinion may, if possible, prevent it.

The proposed settlement, which was for a few
fleeting days proclaimed from Washington as a
great diplomatic triumph for the United States,
commenced with a promise to pay cash for
the lives of the American citizens, who were
lost on the Lusitania. The German Govern-
ment then agreed to conform its future warfare
to the recognized principles of international law,
and then, as a disavowal of the Lusitania outrage,
the German Government was to make substan-
tially the following acknowledgment to the world:

Germany, while considering reprisals against an
enemy legal, but knowing that the United States

The Submarine Controversy ^^

regards reprisals as illegal, admits that the attack
on the Lusitania was an act of retaliation that was
not justifiable so far as it involved the loss of neutral
lives, and also assumes liability for such loss of life.

Such was the nature of the settlement, as semi-
officially given to the press of the country both by
the American State Department and the German
Embassy.

At the time that this proposed settlement was
interrupted by the new issue of arming merchant-
men, Secretary Lansing and the German Ambas-
sador were discussing whether Germany would
**assume" liability or would "recognize" liabil-
ity. This was the merest verbal hair-splitting
in view of the express admission by the German
Government that the attack on the Lusitania was
unjustifiable "so far as it involved the loss of
neutral lives. " Had this qualified disavowal been
accepted by America, it would have compromised
the justice of its cause and modified the existing
law of humanity.

If the attack on the Lusitania were only
unjustifiable "so far as it involved the loss of
neutral lives," then the implication is not un-
reasonable that it was justifiable so far as it
destroyed the lives of non-combatants of belliger-
ent nations. It is true that it does not expressly

78 The War and Humanity

say so, but the "disavowal," which the United
States had insistently demanded for nearly a
year, was a full recognition of a wrong, and to the
extent that a wrong was not admitted it was by
implication justified by this attempted ' ' accord and
satisfaction. " This distinction was indefensible
either on grounds of humanity or of international
law. If Germany had a right without visit or search
to attack the Lusitania because it was an English
vessel and was believed to be carrying contraband,
and had a right to destroy English non-combat-
ants, then that right could not be impaired by the
accidental presence on the Lusitania of American
citizens. No American would contend that the
army of the Crown Prince was prevented from
bombarding Verdun if some American citizens
were accidentally in the beleaguered city.

The massacre of the passengers and crew of the
Lusitania was unjustifiable, not because American
citizens were sacrificed, but because all on board
were non-combatants. Its sinking without pre-
vious visit or search and without making any pro-
vision for the lives of the passengers and crew,
would have been in gross violation of the previously
accepted law of nations, even though no neutral
happened to be there. Germany had always
asserted and even insisted upon this contention.

The Submarine Controversy 79

Indeed it had formerly carried further this principle
of immunity by asserting that the crew of a bel-
ligerent merchant vessel could not even be made
prisoners of war. Such was the contention of
Prince Bismarck in the Franco-German War of
1870, when a French warship seized a German
merchant vessel and thus treated its crew.

President Wilson had in the earlier stages of the
diplomatic controversy clearly recognized this fact
and had very properly and justly rested its conten-
tion upon the rights of non-combatants, but in the
later notes, and until the final note of April i8th,
he so far modified his claim as to rest it upon the
immunity of neutrals from the effects of reprisals.
Most fortunately, after the destruction of the
Sussex had again aroused the Wilson Administra-
tion from its policy of inaction, its claim was again
securely rested not merely upon the rights of
neutrals but "upon manifest principles of human-
ity." It fittingly and forcefully denounced sub-
marine warfare as "utterly incompatible with the
principles of humanity, the rights of neutrals, and
the sacred immunities of non-combatants." It
is most gratifying that it thus returned to the
broader and nobler ground of its contention.

Unless we are to retrograde to the principles of
savagery, which prevailed in the dark ages and

8o The War and Humanity

before the Roman Empire, then the fundamental
and all-comprehensive restriction on the rights of
war must be based on the broad and humane con-
sideration that as non-combatants make no pre-
tence to fight, either by way of offence or defence,
their lives shall be spared so far as is humanly pos-
sible. No other position can be reconciled with
the claims of conscience.

To any humane man, it cannot matter whether
the women and children, who were so ruthlessly
thrown to the waves, were Americans, Germans,
Austrians, French, English, or Russian. They
were women and children, and that ought to have
been the chief ground of their immunity. If this
principle were ever important to humanity, it is
infinitely important today, when the methods of
destruction have been horribly and infinitely
multiplied by the agencies of chemistry.

Undoubtedly a siege of a city incidentally in-
volves both injury and death to many non-
combatants. The blockade of a country has of
necessity a like effect. Prince Bismarck in 1871,
and Count Capri vi in 1892 both contended that a
blockade to cut off foodstuffs was not only legiti-
mate warfare but a comparatively humane way Gi
ending a war. Germany won its great triumph
over France in 1871 by starving the non-combat-

The Submarine Controversy 8i

ants of Paris. While Bismarck and von Moltke
feasted in Versailles, the people of Paris died by-
thousands. They fed upon horses, dogs, cats, and
even rats. A dog fetched twenty francs, a rat
five, but even these last rCvSorts to avoid starvation
could not save children, who perished for want of
milk. Bismarck threatened to resign if his govern-
ment even accumulated food supplies to give the
starving people of Paris immediate sustenance upon
their surrender, claiming that that course would
encourage France to prolong the contest to the
last possible hour. The world accepted this
method of war, because a surrender would avoid
starvation. " Krieg ist Krieg/' The coercion of
a nation by a food blockade is often an incident
of warfare, but it does not follow that an aero-
plane, a ZeppeHn, a submarine, or a platoon of
soldiers can deliberately and intentionally destroy
non-combatants to terrorize and coerce a belligerent
nation.

The indiscriminate dropping of explosives on
a city, like London, Freiburg, or Stuttgart, not
within the true war zone, is wrong, whether done
by English, German, or French aviators, and is a
deadly affront to civilization. I share with Lord
Bryce the profound regret that the Allies have oc-
casionally resorted to reprisals of this character.

82 The War and Humanity

Fortunately this proposed compromise of the
underlying moral principle as to the sacred im-
munity of non-combatants without distinction
of nationality was forgotten in the issue as to
armed merchantmen ; and while that was pending,
the German Government again committed an in-
defensible outrage in sinking on March 24, 191 6,
the Sussex, a Channel ferryboat, and again de-
stroying many women and children.

When challenged to justify this act and other
acts of a similar character, and to reconcile these
murderous deeds with the solemn pledges given
to this Government, the German Government on
i\pril 10, 1 91 6, replied with a cynically insolent
note. It said in effect that although a German
submarine did on the same day, at about the same
hour, and in the same locality, and in the same
manner, sink an English boat, yet that a sketch
drawn by the captain of the submarine through his
periscope, did not correspond with the picture of
the Sussex in a London illustrated paper, and that
it therefore must have been another vessel.

This note would be comic, if it were not so
tragic. It was an obvious insult to the Wash-
ington Government and measures the attitude
of almost contemptuous indifference which the
German Government then maintained to the

The Submarine Controversy 83

United States. As to the three other ships, de-
stroyed about the same time, the German Gov-
ernment repHed by admitting the fact and
justifying the deed, without even deigning to
give a reason.

This was the culmination of a course of conduct
running over a year, in which not only the acknow-
ledged rules of international law and the principles
of humanity, but the solemn pledges to the United
States, had been ruthlessly and cynically broken.
And yet, after all that experience of deception,
cunning, and violated promises, all that the United
States Government did, by its note of April 18,
191 6, was to demand an immediate cessation of
these practices (a demand already made in almost
the same terms on June 9, 191 5) accompanied,
however, by the threat that if the demand were not
complied with, diplomatic relations between the
two countries would be severed.

It is true that the German Government bases
its justification of these outrages upon the prin-
ciple of reprisal and that the law of reprisals
may to some not clearly defined extent modify
the ordinary rules of war is clear; but repri-
sals must be equivalent in degree, if not in kind,
and cannot override fundamental principles of
humanity.

84 The War and Humanity

If England is violating international law by-
shutting off the food supplies of the German
population, then Germany would be equally
justified in cutting off by lawfiil methods the food
supplies of England. If in such a blockade Eng-
land, without preliminary visit and seizure, sank
German merchant vessels and massacred non-
combatants, then Germany would, as to the non-
combatants of the offending country, have the
right of reprisal. But it does not follow that a
blockade of a country, with the incidental result
of economic suffering to the civilian population,
justifies by way of reprisal the dehberate massacre
of non-combatants on a merchant vessel.

The German Government did not suggest, when
Paris was besieged in 1870, and its people were
dying from starvation, that such injury to thou-
sands of non-combatants would justify the French
Army in shooting every German non-combatant,
who happened to be in the besieged city, and yet
logically this would result from Germany's present
contention. To admit that the suffering, which
the civilian population of any country incidentally
suffers through a blockade, justifies a resort to sav-
agery would be a fatal negation of international
law. The blockade of the South by the Federal
Government in the Civil War caused great suffer-

The Submarine Controversy 85

ing to the civilian population of the South but
would it have justified piracy?

The American note of April i8th demanded an
immediate reply. Germany showed its indifference
to this request by waiting more than a fortnight,
although the Teutonic Powers gave Servia only
forty-eight hours to consider far more sweeping
demands. This delay might be excused if the
reply were in its form conciliatory. On the con-
trary, the note in places was insulting in terms and
at no place gave an unqualified acceptance of the
just demands of the United States.

Replying to the assertion of the American note
that the submarine methods had resulted in the
"indiscriminate destruction of vessels of all sorts,
nationalities, and destinations," the German
Foreign Office, having passed through the various
stages of a quarrel referred to by Touchstone,
finally reached the "lie direct" by the amazing
statement that it emphatically repudiated the
assertion, adding a charge that the United States
had made a grave charge without any specification
of facts. It then proceeds to repudiate to some ex-
tent the express pledge, which was given by Count
Bemstorff to Secretary Lansing on September the
first, that no " liners " should be sunk without pre-
liminary compliance with the rules of international

86 The War and Humanity

law as to visit and seizure, by stating that it
never agreed to limit its method of warfare "in the
war zone surrounding Great Britain." It adds:

With regard to these [meaning thereby "enemy
merchant vessels" in the war zone] no assurances
have ever been given to the Government of the
United States.

This presented a remarkable culmination to a
strange chapter of diplomatic history. At a time
when the American Government was pressing for a
disavowal of the sinking of the Lusitania and ask-
ing for explanations as to the Arabic, both destroyed
in the so-called war zone, Count Bemstorff stated
that he was authorized by his Government to give
an assurance that "Uners" should not be sunk
without respecting the unquestioned principles of
international law as to the safety of non-com-
batants. As all the vessels, of whose destruction
the United States was then complaining, had been
sunk in the war zone and included all classes of
"liners," passenger or freight, and as its demands
for a disavowal and cessation of these murderous
practices had their principal reference to the war
zone, the pledge of September 1st, phrased by the
German Foreign Office without respect to locality,
that "liners" should not be destroyed could only

The Submarine Controversy 87

have one meaning. If the war zone and enemy
merchant vessels were to be exempted from the
operation of the pledge, the German Foreign Office
should have said so. That office never qualified
that pledge, although its Ambassador in Washing-
ton did state some months later, on January 7,
19 1 6, that in the Mediterranean, German sub-
marines

had from the beginning orders to conduct "cruiser
warfare" against enemy merchant vessels only in
accordance with the general principles of interna-
tional law and in particular measures of reprisal, as
applied to the war zone around the British Isles, were
to be excluded.

Little attention was paid to these words at
the time, but it is clear that as to the so-called
war zone, Germany never intended to respect the
principles of international law regarding warfare
against merchant vessels, and that the pledge of
September ist, which wholly failed to give this
warning, was a palpable attempt to deceive neutral
nations by a misleading promise.

The quibble involved in the contention of the
German note of May 5th did not relate so much
to the waters within and beyond the so-called
war zone as to the distinction, which the Ger-
man Government after many months sought to

88 The War and Humanity

draw, between different classes of "liners." The
German Government in its note of May 5 th had
attempted to convey the impression that the
assurance which it gave on September i, 19 15,
through Ambassador Bemstorff, only had refer-
ence to large passenger liners and did not give
immunity to the ordinary freight vessels of
belligerent countries.

In determining how far this distinction is justi-
fied, the dispassionate neutral will consider what is
fairly implied in the meaning of the word "liner"
and what impression was sought to be conveyed
to the American Government by the use of that
term.

The original use of this word applied to any
merchant vessel which was large enough to be
utilized in war in the line of battle; hence the
word "liner." This meaning, however, is obso-
lete, and a liner now means any vessel which sails
for any commercial purpose with reasonable regu-
larity and as a part of recognized commerce.
Thus, we speak of trans-Atlantic liners and coast-
wise liners; of passenger liners and freight liners.
We would not call a gentleman's private yacht
a liner, but any boat, whether it carries passengers
or not, which sails upon schedule routes between
ports and upon whose sailings the business world

The Submarine Controversy 89

relies, is a liner, whether it carries passengers or
crosses the ocean or not.

Before Bernstorff gave his pledge of September
1st, that "liners" should not be sunk, vessels of
different classes had been sunk. While the
Lusitania was one of the great trans-Atlantic
passenger liners, other boats, which had been the
subject of the diplomatic protests, were mere
freight carriers, and the protests of the United
States had reference to both classes. The Ger-
man Foreign Office had given its assurance that
"liners" should not be sunk, and in the absence
of some restrictive definition or other qualifica-
tion, this could only mean that the vessels of com-
merce of any class would not be sunk without
complying with the rules of international law
and this pledge was irrespective of the presence of
the "liner" in or without the so-called war zone.

When, therefore, the German Foreign Office in
its note of May 5th denied that it had ever given
any pledge with respect to enemy freight vessels
in the war zone, it attempted a double quibble —
a quibble on the word "liner" and a quibble
on the locality of the sinking; and both quib-
bles were unworthy of a great nation and a
tragic subject.

Thus more than eight months afterwards the

90 The War and Humanity

German Foreign Office disavows a pledge, pub-
licly made in its name by its own Ambassador.

The note of May 5th then contained a gratui-
tously insulting sneer by suggesting its regret
"that the sentiments of humanity, which the
Government of the United States extends with
such fervour to the unhappy victims of submarine
warfare, are not extended with the same warmth
of feeling" to the civilian population of Germany.

It is true that the last note of the German Gov-
ernment states that it has decided to make further
concessions in the methods of submarine warfare,
and renews its promises, subject to immediate cancel-
lation without warning, to conform the activities of
submarine warfare to international law both within
and beyond the war zone, but what assurance can
the United States have that these pledges will be
better respected than their predecessors? How
soon will the new condition arise, when, dissatisfied
with America's dealing with Great Britain, Ger-
many again murders its citizens on the high seas?
For the present the pledge, caused by political con-
siderations and the hope that America may pull
diplomatic chestnuts out of the fire for Germany,
may be sincere. But was this conditional and pos-
sibly temporary concession the "disavowal" of the
Lusitania, which was demanded for a year past ?

The Submarine Controversy 91

The Wilson Administration hastened to accept
this conditional and in some respects insulting
note and, while it rejected the implied conditions
in vigorous and fitting terms, it swallowed the
residue. At present writing both the State
Department and the German Embassy are em-
phatically denying that any " disavowal," such
as the United States has insistently demanded,
has either been made or accepted. It is now
announced from Washington that the State De-
partment is ready to resume the Lusitania nego-
tiations. Nearly eighteen months gone and as
yet neither disavowal nor atonement !

On the very heels of this announcement came
the intelligence on the 9th of October, 191 6, that
a German submarine, appearing in American
waters beyond the three-mile limit, had sunk five
merchant vessels. In each case an abrupt warn-
ing was given and the submarine paused long
enough before destroying the vessels to enable
the passengers and crew to take to the life-boats.
These vessels were sunk at distances from the
mainland varying from forty miles to eighty miles.
A typical instance was the sinking of the Stephana,
a British vessel bound from Halifax, Nova Scotia,
to New York. It contained ninety-four passengers,
some of whom were American citizens and many

92 The War and Humanity

of whom were women and children. These pas-
sengers were at dinner, when at eight o'clock on
Sunday night October 8th, the Captain of the
Stephano suddenly appeared and ordered them to
take immediately to the boats, as the ship was to be
sunk. The boats were launched and some of the
women and children were lowered by ropes and
others were obliged to descend by rope ladders.
The boats were then cast adrift and their occu-
pants, thus floating on the dark surface of the
waters at least sixty miles from the nearest land,
saw the lighted steamer go to its watery grave.
They were rescued by an American torpedo de-
stroyer about twenty minutes after the passengers
had taken to the boats.

As this book goes to press several weeks have
elapsed and in that interval, although the Minister
of Foreign Affairs for Holland has been swift to
denounce the outrage, and the Government of
Norway has forbidden access by submarines to
its territorial waters, unless they remain on the
surface and fly their flag, the Wilson Administra-
tion has been silent, excepting the semi-official inti-
mations given to the press, that it has not yet
found in this new raid upon neutral commerce any
departure from the rules of international law.

This is the more surprising as in previous com-

The Submarine Controversy 93

munications the State Department was explicit
in warning the German Government that it was
as unjustifiable to jeopardize the lives of passen-
gers as to sacrifice them, and that to put non-com-
batants in a boat on the high seas, far from land,
was such jeopardy. Mr. Wilson had emphasized
this both in his second Lusitania note and in his
Sussex note, as follows :
On May 13, 1915, he said:

The Government of the United States desires to
call the attention of the Imperial German Govern-
ment, with the utmost earnestness, to the fact that
the objection to their present method of attack
against the trade of their enemies lies in the prac-
tical impossibility of employing submarines in the
destruction of commerce without disregarding those
rules of fairness, justice, and humanity which all
modern opinion regards as imperative. It is virtu-
ally impossible for the officers of a submarine to visit
a merchantman at sea and examine her papers and
cargo. It is virtually impossible for them to make a
prize of her, and if they cannot put a prize crew on
board of her they cannot sink her without leaving
her crew and all on board of her to the mercy of the
sea in her small boats. These facts, it is understood,
the Imperial German Government frankly admits.
We are informed that, in the instances of which we
have spoken, time enough for even that poor meas-
ure of safety was not given and, in at least two of
the cases cited, not so much as a warning was re-

94 The War and Humanity

ceived. Manifestly submarines cannot he used against
merchantmen, as the last few weeks have shown, with-
out an inevitable violation of many sacred principles
of justice and humanity.

On April 19, 1916, he said:

Again and again the Imperial Government has
given its solemn assurances to the Government of
the United States that at least passenger ships
would not be thus dealt with, and yet it has re-
peatedly permitted its undersea commanders to
disregard those assurances with entire impunity.
... It has become painfully evident that the
position which it (the Government of the United
States) took at the very outset is inevitable, namel5^
the use of submarines for the destruction of an enemy's
commerce is, of necessity, because of the very character
of the vessels employed and the very methods of attack,
which their employment, of course, involves, utterly
incompatible with the principles of humanity, the
long-established and incontrovertible rights of neutrals
and the sacred immunities of noncombatants .

Unless the Imperial Government shall now im-
mediately declare and effect an abandonment of its
present methods of submarine warfare against pas-
senger and freight-carrying vessels, the Government
of the United States can have no choice but to
sever diplomatic relations with the German Empire
altogether.

The German Government having thus sunk, al-
most within our territorial waters, five ships, with

The Submarine Controversy 95

the " poor measure of safety " already denounced
by the United States in its note of May 13, 191 5,
as " utterly incompatible with the principles of
humanity," the Wilson Administration, as this
book goes to press, has again apparently acqui-
esced in the precise mode of naval warfare which
this Government has repeatedly denounced, a
mode of warfare which differs in degree and not
in kind from the methods of Buccaneers in the
Spanish Main.

Silent as to this fresh outrage, the Wilson Adminis-
tration found in it a pretext for publishing a note,
previously sent to the Allied Nations, warning them
in substance that any destruction by their cruisers
of an American submarine, on the mistaken sup-
position that it was a hostile submarine, would
be at their peril, and the further notice that
American ports would not be closed to sub-
marines, which within the limitations applicable
to other war vessels, could therefore replenish their
stores of fuel and food and obtain by the purchase
of a newspaper all needed information as to the
movements of merchant vessels.

It may be suggested that the United States had
little direct concern in this new submarine outrage,
because all the destroyed vessels were of foreign
registry. The United States, as every nation, has

96 The War and Humanity

a direct and vital stake in the preservation of
international law. This common right and inter-
est of all Powers in the law of nations was illus-
trated in 1861, when Captain Wilkes, in violation
of international law, took from the British steamer,
the Trent, the two Commissioners from the Con-
federate States. France and Prussia at once en-
tered an emphatic protest against this course.
Both nations regarded the seizure of Mason and
Slidell as in violation of international law, the
common heritage of civilization.

The note of Prussia, dated December 25, 1861,
was signed by Count Bemstorff, who the author
understands is the father of the present Ambas-
sador to the United States. His clear assertion
of the right and duty of every civilized nation to
protest against any palpable invasion of inter-
national law, even though such nation is not
directly interested in the particular transaction, is
interesting and may be profitably commended to
those Americans who feel that the United States
had no such direct interest in the invasion of Bel-
gium as justified the exercise of its moral authority
by way of protest. The elder Bemstorff said:

This occurrence, as you can well imagine, has
produced in England and throughout Europe the
most profound sensation, and thrown not Cabinets

The Submarine Controversy 97

only, but also public opinion, into a state of the
most excited expectation. For, although at pre-
sent it is England only which is immediately con-
cerned in the matter, yet, on the other hand, it is
one of the most important and universally recog-
nized rights of the neutral flag which has been
called into question.

I need not here enter into a discussion of the
legal side of the question. Public opinion in
Europe has, with singular unanimity, pronounced
in the most positive manner for the injured party.
As far as we are concerned, we have hitherto ab-
stained from expressing ourselves to you upon the
subject, because in the absence of any reliable in-
formation we were in doubt as to whether the
Captain of the San Jacinto, in the course taken by
him, had been acting under orders from his Gov-
ernment or not. Even now we prefer to assume
that the latter was the case. Should the former
supposition, however, turn out to be the correct
one, we should consider ourselves under the neces-
sity of attributing greater importance to the
occurrence, and to our great regret we should find
ourselves constrained to see in it not an isolated
fact but a public menace offered to the existing
rights of all neutrals.

"Remember the Maine** was once a rallying
cry of potent force; and it awakened in the soul
of a proud people the passionate resolve to end
forever the misrule of Cuba.

"Remember the Lusitania!" Yes; it, too, will

98 The War and Humanity

be remembered by the American people — not with
a proud consciousness of a work well done, but
with the humiliating recollection of a great work
for humanity left undone through the supine in-
action and timid counsels of those officials, to
whom the dignity and honour of the Republic
were for the time being committed.

I

Ill

THE CASE OF EDITH CAVELL

" The murderer has but one hour,
The viciim has eternity."

— Lamartine.

99

Ill

THE CASE OF EDITH CAVELL

Those who have regarded the Supreme Court
of Civilization — meaning thereby the moral senti-
ment of the world — as a mere rhetorical phrase or
an idle illusion should take note how swiftly that
court — sitting now as one of criminal assize — has
pronounced sentence upon the murderers of Edith
Cavell. The swift vengeance of the world's opin-
ion has called these criminals to the bar, and
in executing them with the lightning of universal
execration has forever degraded them.

The World Court of Public Opinion is in no
doubt as to the fact or gravity of the crime, but as
yet it has not been able with complete accuracy
to apportion the relative responsibility of those
who participated in this foul murder. This is due
to the fact that the German Government has not
disclosed to the world the exact nature of its
military Government in Belgium.

It is generally known that General Baron von
Bissing is the CivQ Governor of Belgium, but as

lOI

102 The War and Humanity

the entire government is in its nature a military
one, little comfort can be drawn from the adminis-
trative distinction which the German Government
draws on occasion between the acts of von Bissing,
as the Civil Governor of Belgium, and General
von Sauberzweig as the Military Governor. The
higher authority in Belgium is von Bissing,
but the extent to which the Military Governor
is subject to him is unknown except to the
General Staff.

When the world called to the bar of public opin-
ion the murderers of Edith Cavell, the Kaiser sum-
moned von Bissing to the Imperial headquarters
to explain the nature of the tragedy. It was
therefore not unnatural that the world visited the
whole responsibility of the tragedy upon von
Bissing; but it is possible that he may have
received more than his due share of the obloquy,
for while the civil government of Belgium is in his
keeping, purely military measures are apparently
under the control of General von Sauberzweig,
whose signature to the findings of the alleged
judicial court finally condemned Edith Cavell to
death.

Von Bissing, however, cannot escape some share
of the obloquy by claiming that it was not within
his province to revise the sentence pronounced by

The Case of Edith Cavell 103

von Sauberzweig, for as will hereafter appear, the
American Legation earnestly pleaded with his sub-
ordinate, Baron von der Lancken, who was in
charge of the Department of Foreign Affairs, to
telephone or telegraph the Kaiser, and von der
Lancken, in behalf of von Bissing, refused to do
this, upon the false pretence that even the Kaiser
could not override the finding of the Military Tri-
bunal, as finally sanctioned by von Sauberzweig.
Von Bissing's part in the crime may therefore be
no greater than that of Pilate, who sought to wash
his hands of innocent blood ; but von Sauberzweig
will enjoy "until the last syllable of recorded time "
the unenviable fame of Judge Jeffreys. He, too,
was an able judge and probably believed that he
was executing justice, but because he did not exe-
cute it in mercy, but with a ferocity that has made
his name a synonym for judicial tyranny, the world
has condemned him to lasting infamy, and this
notwithstanding the fact that he was made Chief
Justice of the King's Bench, Lord High Chancellor
of England, and a peer of the realm. All these
titles are forgotten. Only that of "Bloody
Jeffreys" remains.

Similarly, if his master shall be pleased to honour
General von Sauberzweig with the iron cross for
his action in the case of Miss Cavell, as the Kaiser

104 The War and Humanity

honored the Captain of the submarine which
destroyed the Lusitania — and what order could be
more appropriate in both cases than the Cross,
which recalls how another innocent victim of
judicial tyranny was sacrificed? — then even the
Order of the Iron Cross will not save von Sau-
berzweig from lasting obloquy.

I do not question that he acted according to
his lights and shared with Dr. Alfred Zimmer-
mann great "surprise" that the world should
make such a sensation about the murder of
one woman. Trajan once said that the posses-
sion of absolute power had a tendency to trans-
form even the most humane man into a wild
beast. Judge Black in his great argument in
the case of ex parte Milligan recalled the fact that
Robespierre in his early life resigned his commis-
sion as Judge rather than pronounce the sentence
of death, and that Caligula passed as a very ami-
able young man before he assumed the imperial
purple. The story is as old as humanity that the
appetite for blood or at least the habit of murder
"grows by what it feeds upon. "

The murder of Miss Cavell was one of excep-
tional brutality and stupidity. It never occurred
to her judges that her murder would add an army
corps to the forces of the Allies and that every

The Case of Edith Cavell 105

English soldier would fight more bravely because
of her shining example. So little was this appre-
ciated either in Brussels or Berlin that the Ger-
man Foreign Office, in its official apology for the
crime, issued over the signature of Doctor Alfred
Zimmermann, Under Secretary of Foreign Affairs,
expresses its surprise

that the shooting of an Englishwoman and the con-
demnation of several women in Brussels for treason
have caused a sensation.^

What extraordinary moral naivete ! How could
they appreciate that after the firing squad had done
its work and the body of the woman had been given
hasty burial the victim's virtues would

plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of [her] taking off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or Heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air.
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.

This happened with incredible rapidity, and
the Kaiser made haste to commute the sentences
of the eight other intended victims — two of them

' Dr. Zimmermann's defence of the Cavell execution is printed
in full as an appendix to this article on p. 295 et seq.

io6 The War and Humanity

being also women — and the Berlin Foreign Office
also issued to the world its defence of its action.

It began with an expression of "pity that Miss
Cavell had to be executed," but the sincerity of
this pity can be measured by the fact that con-
currently with Dr. Zimmermann's official apology
there came from Berlin an "inspired" supple-
mental explanation, which sought to depreciate
the character and services of the dead nurse,
referred to by Dr. Zimmermann as "the Cavell
woman" by stating "that she earned a living by
nursing, charging fees within the means of the
wealthy only. "

The world has an abundant refutation of this
cruel and cowardly slur upon the memory of a
dead woman, for one who first hazarded her life
and then gave it freely to save the lives of others
— for such was the charge for which she died —
is not a woman to restrict her gracious ministra-
tions of mercy for mercenary motives.

The Kaiser was swift to see the deadly injury
to his cause of this latest evidence of military
tyranny. Not only did he commute the sen-
tences of Miss Cavell's alleged accomplices — as if
to say with Macbeth, "Thou canst not say I did
it" — but he summoned von Bissing to explain
their actions in the matter, but as the Kaiser

The Case of Edith Cavell 107

is responsible for 'the invasion of Belgium and
has hitherto condoned its attendant horrors, he
can no more absolve himself from some share
of responsibility than could Macbeth disavow his
responsibility for the deeds of his two hirelings.

The literary analogy is justified. When the
author witnessed, in the summer of 191 6, the
battlefield of the Somme and saw the prodigious
British artillery largely concealed by trees and
bushes, he thought that Macbeth' s miracle had
indeed come to pass, for "Bimam wood had come
to Dunsinane."

The stain of this murder rests upon Prussian
militarism and not upon the German people, for it
should not be forgotten that possibly the most
chivalrous act, which has happened since the
beginning of the war, was the erection by a German
community, where a detention camp was main-
tained, of a statue to the French and English
soldiers who had died in captivity, with the beauti-
ful inscription :

To our Comrades, who here died for their dear
Fatherland.

What could be more chivalrous or present a
greater contrast to the assassination of Miss
Cavell?

io8 The War and Humanity

We are advised by Dr. Zimmermann that Miss
Cavell was given a fair trial and was justly con-
victed, but as the proceedings of the trial were not
public and as Miss Cavell was denied knowledge
in advance of the trial of the nature of the charges
against her, and as we know little of the circum-
stances of her alleged offence except the reports of her
judges and executioners, the world will be somewhat
incredulous as to whether the trial was as just to
the accused as Dr. Zimmermann would have us
believe.

The difficulty with this assurance is that
the German conception of what is a fair trial
differs from that which prevails in Anglo-Saxon
countries, just as the German word "Gerech-
tigkeit" does not convey the same mental or
moral conception as the English word "justice,"
or "Freiheit" the same meaning as "liberty."
" Gerechtigkeit " means little more than the
exercise of the power of the State, and in its
sanction finds its moral authority. In England,
France, and the United States the idea of justice
is that an individual has certain fundamental and
inalienable rights, which even the State cannot
override, and none of these fundamental rights
has been more highly valued in the evolution
of English liberty than the rights of a defend-

The Case of Edith Cavell 109

ant charged with crime. Whether guilty or not
guilty, he cannot be arrested without a judicial
warrant on proof of probable cause; he may not
be compelled to testify against himself; he is en-
titled to a speedy trial and shall be informed in
advance thereof of the exact nature of the accusa-
tion; his trial shall be public and open, and he shall
be confronted with the witnesses against him and
have compulsory process for his own defence; in
advance of trial he shall have permission to select
his own counsel, and shall have the opportunity
to confer freely with him.

Most of these fundamental rights were denied
to Miss Cavell.

It is difficult to understand why, in view of
the policy of terrorism, which has prevailed in
Belgium from the time that the invader first
crossed its frontier, the justice of the execution
should require any discussion in Herr Zimmer-
mann's defence. In the official textbook of the
General Staff of the German Army the definite
policy of terrorizing a conquered country is pro-
claimed as a military theory. Its leading axiom
is there stated by boldly claiming that

a war conducted with energy cannot be directed
merely against the combatants of the enemy State
and the positions they occupy, but il will and must in

no The War and Humanity

like manner seek to destroy the total intellectual and
material resources of the latter. Humanitarian
claims, such as the protection of men and their
goods, can only be taken into consideration in so
far as the nature and object of the war permit.
Consequently the argument of war permits every
belligerent State to have recourse to all means which
enable it to obtain the object of the war.

Miss Cavell's fate only differs from that of
hundreds of Belgian women and children in that
she had the pretence of a trial and presumably
had trespassed against military law, while other
victims of the rape of Belgium were ruthlessly
killed in order to effect a speedy subjugation of the
territory. The question of the guilt or innocence
of each individual was a matter of no importance.
Hostages were taken and ruthlessly shot for the
alleged wrongs of others.

Did not General von Bulow on August 226.
announce to the inhabitants of Liege that

it is with my consent that the General in command
has burned down the place [Ardenne] and shot about
one hundred inhabitants.

It was this distinguished General who posted
a proclamation at Namur on August 25th as
follows :

The Case of Edith Cavell iii

Before 4 o'clock all Belgian and French prisoners
are to be delivered up as prisoners of war. Citizens
who do not obey this will be condemned to hard
labour for life in Germany. At 4 o'clock a rigorous
inspection of all houses will be made. Every soldier
found will he shot. . . . The streets will be held by
German guards, who will hold ten hostages for each
street. These hostages will be shot if there is any
trouble in that street. ... A crime against the
German Army will compromise the existence of the
whole town of Namur and every one in it.

Did not Field Marshal von der Goltz issue a
proclamation in Brussels, on October 5th, stating
that if any individual disturbed the telegraphic or
railway communications, all the inhabitants would
be ''punished without pity, the innocent suffering
with the guilty'''^.

Individual guilt being thus a matter of minor
importance. Dr. Zimmermann had no occasion
on the accepted theory of Prussian miUtarism
to justify the secret trial and midnight execution
of Edith Cavell.

Indeed, he freely intimates that his Govern-
ment will not spare women, no matter how high
and noble the motive may have been which
inspires any infraction of military law, and to
this sweeping statement he makes but one
exception, namely, that women "in a delicate
condition may not be executed." But why the

112 The War and Humanity

exception? If it be permitted to destroy one life
for the welfare of the miUtary administration of
Belgium, why stop at two? If the innocent living
are to be sacrificed, why spare the unborn? The
exception itself shows that the rigour of military
law must have some limitation, and that its rigid
demands must be softened by a discretion dictated
by such considerations of chivalry and magnanim-
ity as have hitherto been observed by all civilized
nations.

If the victim of yesterday had been an "ex-
pectant mother," Dr. Zimmermann suggests that
her judges and executioners would have spared
her, but no such exception can be found in the
Prussian military code. "It is not so nominated
in the bond, " and the Under Secretary's recogni-
tion of one exception, based upon considerations
of humanity and not the letter of the military code,
destroys the whole fabric of his case, for it clearly
shows that there was a power of discretion which could
have been exercised, if they had so elected.

That her case had its claims not only to mag-
nanimity, but even to military justice, is shown
by the haste with which, in the teeth of every
protest, the unfortunate woman was hurried to
her end. Sentenced at 5 o'clock in the afternoon,
she was executed nine hours later.

The Case of Edith Cavell 113

Of what were her judges and executioners afraid ?
She was in their custody. Her power to help her
country — save by dying — was forever at an end.
The hot haste of her execution and the ^dupHcity
and secrecy which attended it betray an unmistak-
able fear that if her life had been spared until the
world could have known of her death sentence,
pubHc opinion would have prevented this cruel
and cowardly deed. The laboured apology of
Dr. Zimmermann and the swift action of the
Kaiser in remitting the death sentence to those
who were condemned with Miss Cavell indi-
cate that the Prussian officials have heard the
beating of the wings of those avenging angels
of history who, Hke the Eumenides of classic
mythology, are the avengers of the innocent
and the oppressed.

Greatness [wrote ^schylus], is no defence from
utter destruction when a man insolently spurns the
mighty altar of justice.

This is as true today as when it was written
more than two thousand years ago. It is but
a classic echo of the old Hebraic moral axiom
that "the Lord God of recompenses shall surely
requite."

The most powerful and self-willed ruler of mod-
em times learned this lesson to his cost. Pro-

114 The War and Humanity

bably no two instances contributed so powerfully
to the ultimate downfall of Napoleon as his ruth-
less assassination under the forms of military law
of the Duke d'Enghien and the equally brutal
murder of the German bookseller, Palm. The one
aroused the undying enmity of Russia, and the
blood that was shed in the moat of Vincennes
was washed out in the icy waters of the Beresina.
The fate of the poor German bookseller, whom
Napoleon caused to be shot because his writing
menaced the security of French occupation, de-
veloped as no other event the dormant spirit of
German nationality, and the Nuremberg book-
seller, shot precisely as was Miss Cavell, was finally
avenged when Blucher gave Napoleon the coup
de grdce at Waterloo. No one more clearly felt
the invisible presence of his Nemesis than did
Napoleon. All his life, and even in his confinement
at St. Helena, he was ceaselessly attempting to
justify to the moral conscience of the world his
ruthless assassination of the last Prince of the
House of Conde.

The terrible judgment of history was never
better expressed than by Lamartine in the fol-
lowing language:

A cold curiosity carries the visitor to the battle-
fields of Marengo, Austerlitz, Wagram, Leipsic,

The Case of Edith Cavell 115

Waterloo; he wanders over them with dry eyes, but
one is shown at a comer of the wall near the founda-
tions of Vincennes, at the bottom of a ditch, a spot
covered with nettles and weeds. He says, "There
it is!" He utters a cry and carries away with him
undying pity for the victim and an implacable
resentment against the assassin. This resentment
is vengeance for the past and a lesson for the future.
Let the ambitions, whether soldiers, tribunes, or kings,
remember that if they have hirelings to do their will, and
flatterers to excuse them while they reign, there yet
comes afterward a human conscience to judge them and
pity to hate them. The murderer has but one hour;
the victim has eternity.

At the outbreak of the war, Miss Cavell was
living with her aged mother in England. Con-
strained by a noble and imperious sense of duty,
she exchanged the security of her native country
for her post of danger in Brussels. "My duty
is there," she said simply.

She reached Brussels in August, 19 14, and at
once commenced her humanitarian work. When
the German Army entered the gates of Brussels, she
called upon Governor von Luttwitz and placed her
staff of nurses at the services of the wounded under
whatever flag they had fought. The services
which she and her staff of nurses rendered many a
wounded and dying German should have earned
for her the generous consideration of the invader.

ii6 The War and Humanity

But early in these ministrations of mercy she
was obliged by the noblest of humanitarian motives
to antagonize the German invaders. Governor
von Luttwitz demanded of her that all nurses
should give formal undertakings, when treating
wounded French or Belgian soldiers, to act as
gaolers to their patients, but Miss Cavell answered
this unreasonable demand by simply saying:
"We are prepared to do all that we can to help
wounded soldiers to recover, but to be their
gaolers — never."

On another occasion when appealing to a
German brigadier-general on behalf of some
homeless women and children, the Prussian marti-
net— half pedant and half poltroon — answered her
with a quotation from Nietzsche to the effect that
"Pity is a waste of feeling — a moral parasite in-
jurious to the health."

She early felt the cruel and iron will of the
conqueror, but, nothing daunted, she proceeded
in her arduous work, supervised the work of
three hospitals, gave six lectures on nursing a
week, and responded to many urgent appeals
of individuals who were in need of immediate
relief.

When one of her associates, Miss Mary Boyle
O'Reilly, who has recently contributed a moving

The Case of Edith Cavell 117

account of Miss Cavell's work, was expelled
from Belgium, she begged Miss Cavell to take the
opportunity, while it presented itself, to leave that
land of horror, and Miss Cavell, with character-
istic bravery, replied: "Impossible, my friend,
my duty is here."

It was probably in connection with this hu-
manitarian work that she violated the German
military law by giving refuge to fugitive French
and Belgian soldiers until such time as they could
escape across the frontier to Holland. For this
she suffered the penalty of death, and the validity
of this sentence, even under Prussian military law,
I will discuss later. It is enough to say that no
instinct is so natural in every man and woman,
and especially in woman with the maternal in-
stinct characteristic of the sex, than to give a
harbour of refuge to the helpless. All nations
have respected this instinctive feeling as one of the
redeeming traits of human nature, and the history
of war, at least in modem times, can be searched
in vain for any instance in which any one, especially
a woman, has been condemned to death for yield-
ing to the humanitarian impulse of giving tempo-
rary refuge to a fugitive soldier. Such an act is
neither espionage nor treason, as those terms have
been ordinarily understood in civilized countries.

ii8 The War and Humanity

It is true, as suggested by a few in America,
who sought to excuse the Cavell crime, that Mrs.
Surratt was tried, condemned, and executed be-
cause she had permitte4 the band of assassins,
whose conspiracy resulted in the assassination of
Lincoln and the attempted murder of Secretary
Seward, to hold their meetings in her house; but
the difference between this alleged conscious
participation in the assassination of the head
of the State, in a period of civil war, and the
humanitarian aid which Miss Cavell gave to
fugitive soldiers to save them from capture or
possibly to effect their escape, is manifest. I am
assuming that Miss Cavell did give such pro-
tection to her compatriots, for all accessible
information supports this view, and if so, how-
ever commendable her motive and heroic her
conduct, she was guilty of an infraction of mili-
tary law, which justified some punishment and
possibly her forcible detention during the period
of the war.

To regard her execution for this offence as an
ordinary incident of war is an affront to civiliza-
tion, and as it is symptomatic of the Prussian oc-
cupation of Belgium and not a sporadic incident,
it acquires a significance which justifies a full recital
of this black chapter of Prussianism. It illustrates

The Case of Edith Cavell 119

the reign of terror which has existed in Belgium
since the German occupation.

When the German Chancellor made his famous
speech in the Reichstag on August 4, 19 14, and
admitted at the bar of the world the crime which
was then being initiated, he said :

The wrong — I speak openly — that we are com-
mitting we will endeavour to make good as soon
as our military goal has been reached.

Within a few weeks the military goal was reached
by the seizure of practically all of Belgium and by
the voluntary surrender of Brussels to the invader,
and since then, for a period of over tw^o years,
the Belgian people have been subjected to a
state of tyranny for which we must turn to find
a parallel to the history of the Netherlands in
the sixteenth century and recall its occupation
by the Duke of Alva. It must be said in can-
dour that the Prussian occupation of Belgium
has not yet caused as many victims as the
"Bloody Council" of the Duke of Alva, for
the estimated number of non-combatants, who
have been shot in Belgium during the last fourteen
months, is only 6000 as against the 18,000 whom
it is estimated the Spanish General put to death.
It may also be the fact that the present oppres-

120 The War and Humanity

sion of Belgium is marked by some approach to the
forms of law; but it may be doubted whether the
difference is not more in appearance than in reality,
for the administration of law in Belgium has been
a mockery. Of this there can be no more striking
or detailed proof than the protest which was pre-
sented to the German authorities on February
17, 1915, by M. Leon Theodor, the head of the
Brussels bar. The truth of this formal accusation
may be fairly measured by the strong probability
that the brave leader of the Brussels bar would
never have ventured to have made the statements
hereinafter referred to to the German Military
Governor unless he was reasonably sure of his
facts. What he said on behalf of the bar of Brus-
sels was said in the shadow of possible death, and
if he had consciously or deliberately maligned the
Prussian administration of justice in this open and
specific manner, he assuredly took his life into his
hands. This brave and noble document will for-
ever remain one of the gravest indictments of
Prussian misrule and as it states, on the authority
of one who was in a position to know, the details
of the savage tyranny which masqueraded under
the forms of law, a part of it may be profitably
quoted.

After stating the fact "that everything about

The Case of Edith Cavell 121

the German judicial organization in Belgium is
contrary to the principles of law, " and after show-
ing that Belgian civilians were punished for viola-
tions of law, which had never been proclaimed
and of which, therefore, the condemned knew noth-
ing, the distinguished President of the Order of
Advocates says:

This absence of certainty is not only the negation of
all the principles of law; it weighs on the mind and on
the conscience; it bewilders one, it seems to be a per-
manent menace for all, and the danger is all the more
real, because these courts permit neither public nor
defensive procedure, nor do they permit the accused to
receive any communication regarding his case, nor is
any right of defence assured him.

This is arbitrary injustice; the Judge left to him-
self, that is, to his impressions, his prejudices, and
his surroundings. This is abandoning the accused
in his distress, to grapple alone with his all-powerful
adversary.

This justice, uncontrolled, and consequently with-
out guarantee, constitutes for us the most dangerous
and oppressive of illegalities. We cannot conceive
justice as a judicial or moral possibility without free
defence.

Free defence, that is, light thrown on all the
elements of the suit; public sentiment being heard in
the bosom of the judgment hall, the right to say
everything in the most respectful manner, and also
the courage to dare everything, these must be put
at the service of the unfortunate one, of justice and

122 The War and Humanity

law. It is one of the greatest conquests of our his-
tory. It is the keystone of our individual liberty.

What are your sources of information?

Besides the judges, the men of the Secret Service
and the denouncers (in French : delateurs) .

The Secret Service men in civilian clothes, not
bearing any insignia, mixing with the crowds in the
street, in the cafds, on the platforms of street cars,
listen to the conversations carried on around them,
ready to grasp any secret, on the watch not only for
acts but for intentions.

These denouncers of our nation are ever multiply-
ing. What confidence can be placed in their declara-
tions, inspired by hate, spite, or low cupidity? Such
assistants can bring to the cause of justice no useful
collaboration.

If we add to this total absence of control and of
defence, these preventive arrests, the long detentions,
the searches in the private domiciles, we will have
an almost complete idea of the moral tortures to which
our aspirations, our convictions, and our liberties
are subjected at the present time. . . .

Will it be said that we are living under martial
law; that we are submitting to the hard necessities
of war; that all should give way before the superior
interests of your armies?

/ can understand martial law for armies in the
field. It is the immediate reply to an aggression
against the troops, repression without words, the sum-
mary justice of the commander of the army responsible
for his soldiers. But our armies are far away; we
are no longer in the zone of military operations.
Nothing here menaces your troops, the inhabitants
are calm. ;

The Case of Edith Cavell 123

The people have taken up work again. You
have bidden them do it. Each one devotes himself,
magistrates, judges, officials of the provinces and
cities, the clergy, all are at their post, united in one
outburst of national interest and brotherhood.

However, this does not mean that they have
forgotten. The Belgian people lived happily in their
corner of the earth, confident in their dream of in-
dependence. They saw this dream dispelled, they
saw their country ruined and devastated, its an-
cient hospitable soil has been sown with thousands of
tombs where our own sleep ; the war has made tears
flow which no hand can dry. No, the murdered soid
of Belgium will never forget.

As this dignified and noble protest did not lead
to any amelioration of the harsh conditions, a
month later the same brave jurist, M. Leon
Theodor, appeared in Brussels before the so-called
"German Court of Justice" and, in behalf of the
entire Magistracy of Belgium, addressed to the
Prussian Military Judges the following poignantly
pathetic and nobly dignified address, which
met with a like reception as the preceding
communication.

I present myself at the Bar, escorted by the
Counsel of the Order, surrounded by the sympathy
and the confidence of all my colleagues of Brussels,
and I might add of all the Bars of the country. The
Bars of Li^ge, Ghent, Charleroi, Mons, Louvain,

124 The War and Humanity

Antwerp have sent to that of Brussels the expression
of their professional solidarity and have declared
that they adhere to the resolutions taken by the
Counsel of the Order of Brussels. . . .

We are not annexed. We are not conquered.
We are not even vanquished. Our army is fighting.
Our colours float alongside those of France, Eng-
land, and Russia. The country subsists. She is
simply unfortunate. More than ever, then, we now
owe ourselves to her body and soul. To defend
her rights is also to fight for her.

We are living hours now as tragic as any country
has ever known. All is destruction and ruin
around us. Everywhere we see mourning. Our
army has lost half of its effective force. Its per-
centage in dead and wounded will never be obtained
by any of the belligerents. There remains to us
only a corner of ground over there by the sea. The
waters of the Yser flow through an immense plain
peopled by the dead. It is called the Belgian
Cemetery. There sleep our children by the
thousands. There they are sleeping their last
sleep. The struggle goes on bitterly and without
mercy.

Your sons, Mr. President, are at the front; mine
as well. For months we have been living in anxiety
regarding the morrow.

Why these sacrifices, why this sorrow? Belgium
could have avoided these disasters, saved her existence,
her treasures, and the lives of her children, but she pre-
f erred her honour.

Not long after this second protest, M. Leon

The Case of Edith Cavell 125

Theodor was arrested and deported to Germany,
for the offence of defending the oppressed civiHan
population from a system of espionage, drumhead
courts-martial, and secret executions.

It is said that he has since been released through
the intercession of the King of Spain.

It was in this manner that the solemn promise
of the German Chancellor that his country would
make good the wrong done to Belgium has been
kept.

Such was the condition of affairs in Belgium
when Edith Cavell was arrested on August 5,

1915-

About the same time some thirty-five other
prisoners were similarly arrested by the military
authorities, two-thirds of whom were women.

The arrest was evidently a secret one, for it
is obvious that for a time Miss Cavell's friends
knew nothing of her whereabouts. Even the
American Legation, which had assumed the care
of British citizens in Belgium, apparently knew
nothing of Miss Cavell's arrest until it learned
after a second inquiry the fact and the place
of her imprisonment from the German Civil Gov-
ernor of Belgium on September 12, 19 15.

As Miss Cavell was a well-known personage
in Brussels, it is improbable that these facts would

126 The War and Humanity

have been unknown to the American Legation
in Brussels if they had been a matter of public
information on August the 5th or shortly there-
after?

Evidently some information had reached the
British Foreign Office as to Miss Cavell's disap-
pearance, for on August the 26th Sir Edward Grey
requested the American Ambassador in London to
ascertain through the American Legation in Brus-
sels whether it was true that Miss Cavell had
been arrested, and it seems clear from the diplo-
matic correspondence that the American Legation
at Brussels knew nothing of the matter until it
received this inquiry from the American Am-
bassador in London. The fact of her arrest by
the German military authorities may have been
known, but the place of her imprisonment and the
nature of the charges against her were apparently
withheld.

This feature of the case and the manner in which
Mr. Brand Whitlock, the American Minister, was
prevented from rendering any effective aid to Miss
Cavell presents one aspect of the tragedy which
especially concerns the honour and dignity of the
United States.

Her secret trial and hurried execution was a
clear affront to the American Minister at

The Case of Edith Cavell 127

Brussels, and therefore to the American nation.
It is true that in all he did to save her life he
was acting in behalf of and for the benefit of
Great Britain, whose interests the United States
Government has taken over in Belgium; but
this cannot affect the fact that when Mr. Whit-
lock intervened in behalf of the prisoner, sought
to secure her a fair trial, and especially when
he asked her life as a reciprocal favour for the
services his nation had rendered Germany and
German subjects in the earlier days of the war,
he spoke in fact, if not in theory, as an American
and as the diplomatic representative of the United
States.

So secret was Miss Cavell's arrest and so sinister
the methods whereby her end was compassed that
the American Minister in Belgium was obliged to
write on August 31st to Baron von der Lancken,
as the representative in diplomatic matters of von
Bissing, the German Civil Governor of Belgium,
and ask whether it was true that she was
under arrest. To this no reply was promptly
vouchsafed, although it was clearly a matter of life
and death.

The discourtesy of such silence to a great and
friendly nation needs no comment.

Not hearing from Baron von der Lancken, our

128 The War and Humanity

Minister on September loth, again wrote to him
and again asked for a reply. Mr. Whitlock asked
for the opportunity "/o take up the defence of Miss
Cavell with the least possible delay. " To this,
Baron von der Lancken replied by an ex parte
statement that Miss Cavell had admitted

having concealed in her house various English
and French soldiers, as well as Belgians of military
age, all anxious to proceed to the front. She also
acknowledged having supplied these soldiers with
the funds necessary to proceed to the front and
having facilitated their departure from Belgium
by finding guides to assist them In clandestinely
crossing the frontier.

The Baron further answered that her defence
had been intrusted to an advocate by the name
of Braun, ''who is already in touch with the proper
German authorities, " and added:

In view of the fact that the Department of the
Governor General as a matter of principle does not
allow accused persons to have any Interviews what-
ever, I must regret my Inability to procure for M.
de Leval permission to visit Miss Cavell, as long
as she Is in solitary confinement.

M. de Leval was a Belgian lawyer and the offi-
cial legal adviser of the American Legation. His
attempt to save Miss Cavell, as will hereafter ap-
pear, was worthy of all praise.

The Case of Edith Cavell 129

It will thus be seen and will hereafter appear
more fully that in advance of her trial Miss Cavell
was kept in solitary confinement and was denied
any opportunity to confer with counsel in order
to prepare her defence. Her communication with
the outside world was wholly cut off, with the
exception of a few letters, which she was permitted
to write under censorship to her assistants in the
school for nurses, and it is probable that in this
way the fact of her imprisonment first became
known to her friends.

The fact remains that the desire of the American
Minister to have its counsel see her with a view to
the selection of such counsel as Miss Cavell might
desire, was refused and even the counsel, whom the
German Military Government permitted to act,
was denied any opportunity to see his client until
the trial.

The counsel in question was a M. Braun, a
Belgian advocate of recognized standing, but for
some reason, which does not appear, he was unable
or declined to act for Miss Cavell and he secured
for her defence another Belgian lawyer, whose
name was Kirschen. According to credible in-
formation, Kirschen was a Roumanian by birth,
although a naturalized Belgian subject and a
member of the Brussels bar, but it will hereafter

130 The War and Humanity

appear that the steps which he took to keep the
American Legation — the one possible salvation
for Miss Cavell — advised as to the progress of
events, was to say the least peculiar. It is said
that he had been a legal adviser of the German
Legation in Brussels before the war.

Except the explanations made by the German
Civil Government, we know very little as to what
defence, if any, Miss Cavell made. From one of
the inspired sources comes the statement that she
freely admitted her guilt, and from her last inter-
view with the English clergyman it would appear
that she probably did admit some infraction of
military law. But from another German source
we learn the following:

During the trial in the Senate Chamber the ac-
cused, almost without exception, gave the impres-
sion of persons cleverly simulating naive innocence.
It was not a mere coincidence that two thirds of the
accused were women. The Englishwoman, Edith
Cavell, who has already been executed, declared
that she had believed as an Englishwoman that she
ought to do her country service hy giving lodgings in
her house to soldiers and recruits who were in peril.
She naturally denied that she had drawn other
people into destruction by inducing them to har-
bour refugees when her own institute was overtaxed.

From this meagre information we can only infer

The Case of Edith Cavell 131

that Miss Cavell did admit that she had sheltered
some soldiers and recniits who were in peril, and
while this undoubtedly constituted a grave in-
fraction of military law, yet it does not present in a
locality far removed from the actual war zone a
case either of espionage or high treason, and is of
that class of offences which have always been
punished on the highest considerations of humanity
and chivalry with great moderation.

The difficulty is that the world is not yet fully
informed what defence, if any, Miss Cavell made,
or whether an adequate opportunity was given her
to make any. The whole proceeding savours of
the darkness of the mediaeval Inquisition.

We have already seen that even if Miss Cavell's
counsel, M. Kirschen, endeavoured in good faith
to make an adequate defence in her behalf, it was
impossible for him to see her in advance of the
trial, and M. Kirschen admitted this when he
explained to the legal counsel of the American
Embassy that

lawyers defending prisoners before a German Mili-
tary Court were not allowed to see their clients
before trial and were not permitted to see any docu-
ment of the prosecution.

It is true that M. Kirschen so far defends the
trial accorded to Miss Cavell as to say

132 The War and Humanity

that the hearing of the trial of such cases is carried
out very carefully and that in his opinion, although
it was not possible to see the client before the trial,
in fact the trial itself developed itself so carefully
and so slowly that it was generally possible to have
a fair knowledge of all the facts and to present a
good defence for the prisoner. This would espe-
cially be the case of Miss Cavell, because the trial
would be rather long, as she was prosecuted with 34
other prisoners.

This explanation of M. Kirschen is amazing
to any lawyer who is familiar with the defence
of men who are charged with a crime. Here
was a case of life and death and the counsel for
the defence intimates that he can adequately
defend the prisoner at the bar without being
previously advised as to the nature of the charges
or an opportunity to confer with his client before
the testimony begins.

Still more remarkable is his explanation that
as his client was to be tried with thirty-four others,
the opportunity for a defence would be especially
ample. As the author had the honour for some
years to be a prosecuting attorney for the United
States Government and therefore has some famil-
iarity with the trial of criminal cases, his opin-
ion may possibly have some value in suggesting
that the complexity of different issues when tried

The Case of Edith Cavell 133

together and the difficulty of distinguishing be-
tween various testimony naturally increases with
the simultaneous trial of a large number of de-
fendants. Where each defendant is tried sepa-
rately, the full force of the testimony for or against
him can be weighed to some advantage, but where
such evidence is intermingled and confused by the
simultaneous trial of thirty-four separate issues,
it is obvious, with the fallibility of human memory,
that the separate testimony against each particular
defendant cannot be fully weighed.

The trial was apparently a secret one in the sense
that it was a closed and not an open court. Other-
wise how can we account for the poverty of informa-
tion as to what actually took place on the trial ?

The court sat for two days in the trial of the
thirty-five cases in question and the American
Legation had been most anxious, in view of
the nature of the case and the urgency of the
inquiries, to ascertain something about the trial.
The outside world apparently knew little or noth-
ing of this wholesale trial of non-combatants, most
of them being women, until some days thereafter,
and the only intimation that the American Lega-
tion previously had was a letter of "a few lines"
from M. Kirschen, stating that the trial would take
place on October the 7th.

134 The War and Humanity

Notwithstanding the assurance of M. Kirschen
that, he would keep the American Legation fully
advised and would even disclose to it in advance
of the trial "the exact charges that were brought
against Miss Cavell and the facts concerning her
that would be disclosed at the trial, " yet no further
information reached the American Legation from
Miss Cavell's counsel, who for some reason did not
advise the American Legation that the trial had
commenced on the 7th and had been concluded on
the 8th. The American Legation only learned the
fact of the trial from "an outsider" and it at once
proceeded to look for M . Kirschen . Unfortunately
he could not be located and thereupon the counsel
for the American Legation wrote him on Sunday,
October the loth, and asked him to send his report
to the Legation or to call on the following day.

Having no word from M. Kirschen as late as
October the nth (his last communication with
the American Legation being on October 3d), the
counsel for the Legation twice called at his house
and again failed to find him in or to receive any
message from him.

It is clear that if M. Kirschen had advised the
American Legation as to the developments of
the trial on October 7th and 8th and had further
advised the Legation promptly as to the conclu-

The Case of Edith Cavell 135

sion of the trial and its probable outcome, there
is a reasonable possibility that Miss Cavell' s
life might have been saved, but for some reason,
as to which M. ICirschen certainly owes an ex-
planation to the civilized world, he failed to
keep his positive promise to keep the Ameri-
can Legation fully advised, and in view of this
fact his assurance to the American Legation
"that the Military Court of Brussels was always
perfectly fair, and that there was not the slightest
danger of any miscarriage of justice," must be
taken with a very large "grain of salt." The
fact is that M. Kirschen was retained and paid by
our Legation to keep it informed. Apparently he
feared to disclose all his knowledge of the devel-
opments for fear that the German Military Court
would resent any disclosure of its Star Chamber
methods. It is undeniable that nearly all who
attended the trial feared to speak of its details.

The significant fact remains that the American
Legation never heard that the trial had taken
place until the day after, and then only learned it
from "an outsider" whose very name it prudently
refused to disclose. To call this an open or pub-
lic trial is an absurdity. Had the American Lega-
tion sent a representative to the trial, the world
would then have had a much clearer knowledge,

136 The War and Humanity

upon which to base its judgment, but when M. De
Leval suggested his intention to attend the trial,
as a representative of the Legation, he was advised
by M. Kirschen that such an act "would cause
great prejudice to the prisoner because the Ger-
man judges would resent it. "

What an indictment of the court ! Even to see
a representative of the American Government at
the trial, in the interests of fair play, would pre-
judice the minds of the judges against the unfor-
tunate woman who was being tried for a capital
offence without any previous opportunity to con-
fer with counsel. There may be a satisfactory
explanation for M. Kirschen's conduct in the
matter, but it has not yet appeared. It should,
however, be added, in fairness to him, that the
anonymous "outsider," from whom the American
Legation got its only information as to the develop-
ments of the trial, stated that Kirschen "made a
very good plea for Miss Cavell, using all arguments
that could be brought in her favour before the
court. "

This does not give the lover of fair play a great
deal of comfort, for if the anonymous informant
was not a lawyer, the value to be attached to his
or her estimate of Kirschen's plea must be re-
garded as doubtful.

The Case of Edith Cavell 137

The same unknown informant told the American
Legation that Miss Cavell was prosecuted "for
having helped English and French soldiers as well
as Belgian young men to cross the frontier and to
go over to England. " It is stated on the same
authority that Miss Cavell acknowledged the
assistance thus given and admitted that some of
them had "thanked her in writing when arriving
in England. "

From the same source the worid gets its only
information as to the exact law which Miss Cavell
was accused of violating. Paragraph 58 of the
German Military Code inflicts a sentence of death
upon

any person who, with the intention of helping the
hostile power, or of causing harm to the German or
allied troops, is guilty of one of the crimes of para-
graph 90 of the German Penal Code,

and the only pertinent section of paragraph 90,
according to the same informant, is the specific
offence of

guiding soldiers to the enemy (in German — "Dem
Feinde Mannschaften zufuhrt").

I affirm with confidence that under this law,
Miss Cavell was innocent and that the true

138 The War and Humanity

meaning of the law was perverted in order to in-
flict the death sentence upon her.

I admit that a strained construction of the
language above quoted might be appHcable to
a defendant who gave refuge to hostile soldiers
in Brussels and thus enabled them to escape across
the frontier into Holland and thence into a bel-
ligerent country, but every penal law must receive
a construction that is favourable to the defendant
and agreeable to the dictates of humanity. Every
civilized country construes its penal laws in favour
of the liberty of the subject and no punishment,
especially one of death, is ever imposed unless the
offence charged comes indubitably within a rigid
construction of the law.

Keeping in mind this elementary principle, it
is obvious that the offence of guiding soldiers to the
enemy refers to the physical act of guiding a fugi-
tive soldier back into his lines. A soldier becomes
detached from his lines. He finds shelter in a farm-
house. The farmer, knowing the roads, secretly
guides him back into his lines, and this obviously
is the offence which paragraph 90 had in mind,
for the German word zujiihrt refers to a personal
guidance.

Miss Cavell simply gave shelter to soldiers and
in some way facilitated their escape to Holland.

The Case of Edith Cavell 139

Holland is a neutral country and it was its duty to
intern any fugitive soldiers who might escape from
any one of the belligerent countries. The fact
that these soldiers subsequently reached England
is a matter that could not increase or diminish the
essential nature of Miss Cavell's case. She
enabled them to get to a neutral country, and this
was not a case of "guiding soldiers to the enemy, "
for Holland was not an enemy of Germany.

This fact must have impressed the Military
Court, for according to the same informant it did
not at once agree upon either the verdict of
* ' Guilty " or the judgment of death, and it is stated
that the judges would not have sentenced her to
death if the fugitive soldiers, who had crossed into
Holland, had not subsequently arrived in England,
but it will astound any lawyer to learn that the
subsequent escape of these same prisoners from
Holland to England could be reasonably regarded
as a guidance by Miss Cavell of these soldiers to
England. In all probability Miss Cavell had little
or nothing to do with these soldiers after they left
Brussels, but even assuming that she provided the
means and gave the directions for their escape
across the frontier between Belgium and Holland,
that was "the head and front of her offending,"
and it does not come within the law under which

140 The War and Humanity

she was sentenced to death. All doubt is set at
rest as to this question of construction, for im-
mediately after the Cavell execution, the German
MiUtary Government of Belgium broadened the
law to include the offence of any ** harbouring of
enemies." The amendment clearly indicates its
doubt as to the appHcation of the former law to
Miss Cavell's act.

' When she was asked by her judges as to her
reasons for sheltering these fugitives, she replied
that she "thought that if she had not done so
they would have been shot by the Germans and
that therefore she thought she only did her duty
to her country in saving their Hves. "

This fairly states what she did, and this brave
and frank reply probably caused her death. She
gave a temporary shelter to men who were in
danger of death, and, as previously stated, thus
yielded to a humanitarian impulse which all
civilized nations have recognized as worthy of the
most lenient treatment.

When, therefore. Dr. Alfred Zimmermann, speak-
ing for the German Foreign Office, expressed its
"surprise" that Miss Cavell's execution should
"have caused a sensation," it is well to remind
the official apologist for Prussia that to offer a
refuge to the fugitive is an impulse of humanity.

The Case of Edith Cavell 141

It is likely that these soldiers were her wounded
patients ; at all events they had found a refuge in
her hospital. They claimed the protection of her
roof and she gave it to them.

In the first act of Walkuere — which is not over-
burdened with the atmosphere of morality — even
the black-hearted Hunding says to his blood-
enemy :

" Heilig ist mein herd;
; Heilig sei dir mein haus."

("Holy is my hearth! Holy will be to thee my
house!")

It must be remembered that all this did not take
place in the zone of actual warfare. A spy caught
in the lines of armies is summarily dealt with of
necessity. But Brussels was miles away from the
scene of actual hostilities. Its civil courts were
open and a civil administration ruled its affairs
of such reputed beneficence and efficiency as to
evoke the ungrudging admiration of a distinguished
college professor who bears the honoured name of
George B. McClellan. There was therefore no
possible excuse under international law for a
court-martial, as this trial plainly was.

In the American civil war a military com-
mission once sought to hold a similar trial in

142 The War and Humanity

Indianapolis over civilians accused of treason, but
the United States Supreme Court, in the case of
ex parte Milligan, sternly repudiated this form of
military tyranny.

In that case the Supreme Court said:

There are occasions when martial rule can be
properly applied. If, in foreign invasion or civil
war, the courts are actually closed, and it is impossible
to administer criminal justice according to law,
then, on the theatre of active military operations,
where war really prevails, there is a necessity to
furnish a substitute for the civil authority, thus
overthrown, to preserve the safety of the army and
society; ... As necessity creates the rule, so it
limits its duration; for, if this government is con-
tinued after the courts are reinstated, it is a gross
usurpation of power. Martial rule can never exist
where the courts are open, and in the proper and
unobstructed exercise of their jurisdiction. // is
also confined to the locality of actual war.

All civilized countries, including Germany, have
always recognized a difference between high trea-
son, punishable with death, and ordinary treason.
The German Strafgesetzbuch thus distinguishes
between high treason {hochverrat) and the lesser
crime of landesverrat. High treason consists in
murdering or attempting to murder a sovereign or
prince of Germany or an attempt by violence to
overthrow the Imperial Government or any State

The Case of Edith Cavell 143

thereof. This alone is punishable with death.

While this distinction of the German Civil Code
may have no application when military law is
being enforced, yet it illustrates a distinction,
which all humane nations have recognized, between
the treason which seeks to overthrow a State by
rebellion and lesser offences against the authority
of a State.

[ Assuming that Miss Cavell's offence could be
regarded in any sense as treasonable, it certainly
constituted the lesser offence under the distinction
above quoted.

Is it not possible that Miss Cavell was tried,
condemned, and executed for her sympathy with
the cause of Belgium and her willingness to save
her compatriots from suffering and death? May
not military necessity — ever the tyrant's plea —
have demanded a victim to terrorize further a
subjugated people ? They chose Miss Cavell.

Notwithstanding the request of the American
Legation in its letter of October 5th that it be
advised not only as to the charges, but also as to
the sentence imposed upon Miss Cavell, and the
express promise of Herr Kirschen to inform it of
all developments, it was kept in ignorance of the
fact that sentence of death had been passed upon
her. Minister Whitlock only heard this on Oc-

144 The War and Humanity

tober nth, and he at once addressed a letter to
Baron von der Lancken in which, after stating this
fact, he appealed "to the sentiment of generosity
and humanity in the Governor General in favour
of Miss Cavell, " with a view to commutation of
the death sentence, and at the same time ad-
dressed a similar letter to Baron von Bissing, the
Civil Governor of Belgium, who failed to give to
the American Government even the cold courtesy
of a reply.

On the morning of October nth our Minister
heard — not from the German authorities, but
from unofficial sources — that the trial had been
completed on the preceding Saturday afternoon,
and he at once communicated with the Political
Department of the German Civil Government,
and was expressly assured

that no sentence had been pronounced and that
there would probably be a delay of a day or two
before a decision was reached.

The official in charge of the PoUtical Department
(Herr Conrad) gave a further

positive assurance that the [American] Legation
would be fully informed as to the developments in
the case.

Notwithstanding this direct promise and further

The Case of Edith Cavell 145

"repeated inquiries in the course of the day,"
no further word reached the Legation, and at 6.20
P.M. it again inquired as to Miss Cavell's fate,
and Herr Conrad again "stated that sentence had
not yet been pronouncedJ'^

To "make assurance doubly sure" three repre-
sentatives of the American Legation separately
inquired at different hours of the fateful day as
to the developments in Miss Cavell's case and
were assured that there had been none. To keep
the matter more secret the sentence of death,
ordinarily pronounced in court, was read to the
victim in the privacy of her prison cell. Two hours
after the last assurance, the American Legation
heard Jrom unofficial sources, that all that had
been told it by the Political Department was un-
true and that the sentence had been passed at
5 o'clock P.M., and before its last inquiry, and
that the execution was to take place that night.

The Secretary of the American Legation, Hugh
Gibson, who throughout this dark tragedy, ap-
proved himself a man and a worthy representa-
tive of his country, proceeded at once to Baron
von der Lancken and again asked as a favour to
this Government that clemency be extended. He
brought with him a letter from the American

Minister, which reads as follows:
10

146 The War and Humanity

My DEAR Baron:

I am too ill to put my request before you in
person, but once more I appeal to the generosity
of your heart. Stand by and save from death
this unfortunate woman. Have pity on her.
Your devoted friend,

Brand Whitlock.

Accompanying this purely personal note were
two substantially similar communications, the
one directed to Baron von Bissing and the other
to Baron von der Lancken. These communi-
cations are as follows :

I have just heard that Miss Cavell, a British sub-
ject, and consequently under the protection of my
Legation, was this morning condemned to death by
court-martial.

If my information is correct, the sentence in the
present case is more severe than all the others that
have been passed in similar cases which have been
tried by the same Court, and, without going into
the reasons for such a drastic sentence, I feel that
I have the right to appeal to your Excellency's
feelings of humanity and generosity in Miss Cavell's
favour, and to ask that the death penalty passed on
Miss Cavell may be commuted and that this un-
fortunate woman shall not be executed.

Miss Cavell is the head of the Brussels Surgical
Institute. She has spent her life in alleviating
the sufferings of others, and her school has tiirned
out many nurses who have watched at the bedside
of the sick all the world over, in Germany as in

The Case of Edith Cavell 147

Belgium. At the beginning of the war Miss Cavell
bestowed her care as freely on the German soldiers
as on others. Even in default of all other reasons,
her career as a servant of humanity is such as to
inspire the greatest sympathy and to call for pardon.
If the information in my possession is correct, Miss
Cavell, far from shielding herself, has, with com-
mendable straightforwardness, admitted the truth
of all the charges against her, and it is the very
information which she herself has furnished, and
which she alone was in a position to furnish, which
has aggravated the severity of the sentence passed
on her.

It is then with confidence, and in the hope of its
favourable reception, that I have the honour to
present to your Excellency my request for pardon
on Miss Cavell's behalf.

This note was read aloud to Baron von der
Lancken, the very official who had refused to
answer the first communication of the Legation
with reference to the matter, and he

expressed disbelief in the report that sentence had
actually been passed and manifested some surprise
that we should give credence to any report not
emanating from official sources. He was quite
insistent on knowing the exact source of our informa-
tion, but this I [Gibson] did not feel at liberty to
communicate to him.

Baron von der Lancken proceeded to express
his belief "that it was quite improbable that sen-

148 The War and Humanity

tence had been pronounced, " and that in any event
no execution would follow. After some hesitation
he telephoned to the presiding judge of the court-
martial and then reported that the Legation's
unofficial information was only too true.

His attention was further called to the express
promise of the Director of the Political Depart-
ment to inform the American Legation of the
sentence, and he was asked to grant the Ameri-
can Government the courtesy of a "delay in
carrying out the sentence."

To this appeal for mercy Baron von der Lancken
replied that the Military Governor General, Sau-
berzweig, was the supreme authority and that he
"had discretionary power to accept or to refuse
acceptance of an appeal for clemency. " He there-
upon left the representative of the American Le-
gation and apparently called upon Sauberzweig
and after half an hour returned with the state-
ment that not only would the Military Governor
decline to revoke the sentence of death, but "that
in view of the circumstances of this case, he must
decline to accept your plea for clemency or any
representation in regard to the matter. "

Thereupon Baron von der Lancken Insisted
that Mr. Brand Whitlock's representative (Mr.
Hugh Gibson, Secretary of the Legation) should

The Case of Edith Cavell 149

take back the formal appeal for clemency addressed
both to him and to von Bissing, and as both
German officials had been fully advised as to the
nature of the plea, Mr. Gibson finally consented.
Baron von der Lancken assured Mr. Gibson that
under the circumstances "even the Kaiser himself
could not intervene," a statement that was very
quickly refuted when the Kaiser — aroused by the
world-wide condemnation of Miss Cavell's execu-
tion— did commute the death sentences imposed
upon the other persons who were condemned to
death with Miss Cavell. One of these, a gently
nurtured woman of noble birth, was given a sen-
tence of ten years' hard labor and is now treated as
a common felon.

During the earnest conversation which took
place in this last attempt to save Miss Cavell's
life, Mr. Gibson took occasion to remind Baron
von der Lancken 's official associates — although it
should not have been necessary — as to the great
services rendered by the United States, and espe-
cially by Mr. Brand Whitlock, in the earlier period
of the German occupation, and this was urged
as a reason why as a matter of courtesy to the
United States Government some more courteous
consideration should be accorded to its request.

At the outbreak of the war, thousands of German

150 The War and Humanity

residents of Belgium returned to their country in
such haste that they left their families behind them.
Mr. Whitlock gathered these women and children
— numbering, it is said, over ten thousand — and
provided them with the necessaries of life, and ulti-
mately safe transportation into Germany, and
having thus placed this inestimable service to thou-
sands of German civilians in one scale, the Ameri-
can representative simply asked, as "the only
request" made by the United States upon grounds
of reciprocal generosity, that some clemency should
be given to Miss Cavell. The refusal to give this
clemency, or even to accept in a formal way the
plea for clemency, is one of the blackest cases of
ingratitude in the history of diplomacy.

On October 22d, there was issued from Brussels
a "semi-official" but anonymous statement, charg-
ing that in the reports of the Secretary of the
American Legation, from which the above quoted
statements are mainly taken, "most of the im-
portant events are inaccurately reproduced."

No specification of any inaccuracy is however
made, except the general denial "that the Ger-
man authorities with empty promises put ofiE the
American Minister" and also the equally general
statement that no promise was given to our
Legation to advise it of developments in the case.

The Case of Edith Cavell 151

A vague, general, and anonymous denial, issued
by men who seek to wash their hands of innocent
blood, cannot avail against Mr. Gibson's clear,
specific, and circumstantial statement. The
Secretary of our Legation states that on October
nth he made "repeated" inquiries of Herr Conrad,
the official in charge of the PoHtical Department
of the German Government in Belgium, the last
inquiry being at 6.20 p. m. by the dock (an hour
after the victim had been sentenced to death),
and was on each occasion assured that "sentence
had not been pronounced" and that "he (Conrad)
would not fail to inform us as soon as there was
any news."

Does Herr Conrad deny this?

The Brussels "semi-official" statement has the
hardihood to state to the world that the American
Minister (Brand Whitlock) had admitted that "no
such promise or assurance was given, " and it
places the responsibility upon M. De Leval, the
Belgian legal counsellor of the American Legation,
but this impudent He is speedily overthrown by the
positive statement of our Minister to Belgium to
our Ambassador in London as follows:

From the date we first learned of Miss Cavell's
imprisonment we made frequent inquiries of the
German authorities and reminded them of their

152 The War and Humanity

promise that we should be fully informed as to
developments. They were under no misapprehen-
sion as to our interest in the matter.

, Will the American people or the people of any
nation hesitate to accept the clear, positive, and
circumstantial statements of Minister Whitlock,
Secretary Gibson, and Counsellor De Leval, at
least two of whom are wholly disinterested in the
matter, as against the self-exculpatory, general,
and anonymous denials of a "semi-official" press
bureau, especially when it is recalled that from the
beginning of the great war, the German Foreign
Office, with whom military honour is supposed to
be almost a religion, has at times stooped to bare-
faced mendacity?

When the world recalls how Austria's Ambas-
sadors in Paris, London, and Petrograd made the
most emphatic statements that the forthcoming
ultimatum to Serbia would be "pacific and con-
ciliatory," and assured the Russian Ambassador
that he could therefore safely leave Vienna, aad
also recalls how the German Ambassadors gave to
England, France, and Russia the most solemn and
unequivocal assurances that

the German Government had no knowledge of the
text of the Austrian note before it was handed in and
had not exercised any influence on its contents,

The Case of Edith Cavell 153

and later admitted, when the lie had served its
purpose, that it had been fully consulted by its
ally before the ultimatum was prepared, it will
give little attention to this attempt of a German
press bureau to discredit the statements of the
American Minister, given in name to Ambassador
Page, in effect to the world.

With the exception of the submarine contro-
versy, during which American citizens were killed
on the high seas while the State Department was
writing vain notes of protest on the subject, no
chapter of its diplomatic history is more humilia-
ting than the tolerance with which it accepted this
deliberate affront to its Legation in Brussels in the
case of Edith Cavell.

While Americans can take justifiable pride in
the brave and courageous attempts of Mr. Hugh
Gibson and M. de Leval to save Edith Cavell's
life, yet they cannot find much cause for pride or
satisfaction in the subsequent action of their State
Department.

Mr. Brand Whitlock had in his communication
to Ambassador Page stated the facts as herein
recited and the German semi-official press bureau
at Brussels thereupon issued a statement denying
that any misleading assurances had been given the
American Legation, or that any promiseshad been

154 The War and Humanity

broken or any discourtesy shown to the United
States. This in effect gave the lie to Mr. Whit-
lock's deliberate statements to the contrary and
the least that any patriotic American could expect
of his State Department would be that it would
support the statements of its Minister until con-
vinced of their falsity.

The State Department, however, in turn gave
to the American press an anonymous statement,
intimating that that Department had received a
long report from its Minister in Brussels, which
acquitted "high German officials of bad faith in
relation to her case. "

The press bureau statement further states that
Mr. Whitlock's report indicated that "the Lega-
tion officially received no pledge or promise that it
would be kept informed of the disposition of the
case." This contrasts very strangely with Mr.
Brand Whitlock's official statement to the British
Government in his report to Ambassador Page as
follows :

From the day we first learned of Miss Cavell's
imprisonment, we made frequent inquiries of the
German authorities and reminded them of their
promise that we should he fully informed as to de-
velopments. They were under no misapprehension
as to our interest in the matter.

The Case of Edith Cavell 155

Mr. Whitlock's long report to Washington has
never been made pubHc and he has thus been left
in the unenviable position that he either mis-
stated an official fact in his report to the Ameri-
can Ambassador in London or that his version
has been repudiated by his own State Depart-
ment upon the authority of his own subsequent
statements to Washington.

It was the obvious duty of the State Department
either to sustain Mr. Brand Whitlock in the only
statement which he has made over his signature,
when it was challenged by the German military
authorities at Brussels, or if convinced that he did
them any injustice, he should have been promptly
recalled. The State Department has preferred,
however, to gloss over the whole incident by
smoothing the ruffled feelings of Miss Cavell' s
judges and executioners by the press bureau
statement in question, while retaining Mr. Brand
Whitlock in Belgium as its representative.

Why should the State Department have been
under such pains to gloss over this tragic incident
and save the face of the German military authori-
ties? The author prefers to assume that the pur-
pose was to save the Minister's status in Belgium
for the good that he could render the unhappy
civilian population of that country. Had the

156 The War and Humanity

incident not been thus glossed over, it is probable
that the German Government would have de-
clined, as it could very properly do under inter-
national law, to recognize any further the status
of the American Legation in Brussels. Freely
conceding this, may not the candid historian in
future years feel that the temporary advantage
was gained at too great a sacrifice? The truth of
history was in question and the issue involved
in the Cavell case should never have been obscured
by this misguided although probably well meant
attempt of the State Department to smooth over
the friction in Brussels by giving some color to the
denial of the German military authorities of one
of the most disgraceful features of a dreadful
tragedy.

In this last interview between Mr. Gibson and
Baron von der Lancken, which took place a few
hours before the execution, Mr. Gibson reminded
these Prussian officials

of our untiring efforts on behalf of German subjects
at the outbreak of the war and during the siege of
Antwerp. I pointed out that, while our services
had been gladly rendered and without any thought
of future favours, they should certainly entitle you
[the American Minister] to some consideration for
the only request of this sort you had made since
the beginning of the war.

The Case of Edith Cavell 157

Even the Minister's appeal to gratitude and to
one of the most ordinary and natural courtesies of
diplomatic life proved unavailing, and at midnight
the Secretary of the American Legation and the
Spanish Minister, who was acting with him, left
in despair. At 2 o'clock that morning Miss
Cavell was secretly executed.

The ordinary courtesy accorded to the vilest
criminal, of being permitted before dying to have
a clergyman of his own selection, was denied
her until some hours before her death, for the
legal counsellor of the American Legation on
October loth applied in behalf of this country for
permission for an English clergyman to see Miss
Cavell, and this, too, was refused, as her jailers
preferred to assign her the prison chaplain as well
as her counsel. Even the final appeal of Mr. Whit-
lock for the surrender of her mutilated body was
denied, on the ground that only the Minister of
War in Berlin could grant it. The request was to
remove the body from the precincts of the jail to a
more seemly place of burial in Brussels. This was
denied and so far as known her body remains
where it was first buried. One can say of that
biuial place, as Byron said of the prison cell of
Chillon: "Let none these marks efface, for they
appeal from tyranny to God."

158 The War and Humanity

Apart from the brutality of the whole incident
there is one circumstance that makes it of peculiar
interest to the American people and which gives
to it the character of rank ingratitude. Its re-
presentative, as above stated, did advise the
German officials that a little delay was asked by
our Legation as a slight return for the innumerable
acts of kindness which its Legation had done for
German soldiers and interned prisoners in the earlier
days of the war before the German invasion had swept
over the land.

The charge of ingratitude may rest soundly
upon far greater and broader grounds.

The United States had contributed in money
and merchandise a sum aggregating many millions
for the relief of the people in Belgium. In so
doing it did to the German nation an inestimable
service, for when Germany first conquered and
then ruthlessly impoverished Belgium the duty
and burden rested upon it to support its popula-
tion to the extent that it might become neces-
sary. The burden of supporting 8,000,000 civilians
was no light one, especially as there existed in
Germany a scarcity of food. As bread tickets
were then being issued in Germany to its people,
the supplies would have been substantially less if
a portion of its food products had been required

The Case of Edith Cavell 159

for the civilian population of Belgium, for ob-
viously the German nation could not permit a
people, whom it had so ruthlessly trampled under
foot, to starve to death. Every dollar that was
raised in America for the Belgian people, there-
fore, operated to relieve Germany from a heavy
burden.

Moreover, when the war broke out, Germany
needed some friendly nation to take over the
care of its nationals in the hostile countries, and
in England, France, Belgium, and Russia the
interests of German citizens were assumed by the
American Government as a courtesy to Germany,
and no one can question how faithfully in the last
fourteen months Page in London, Sharp in Paris,
and Whitlock in Brussels have laboured to alle-
viate the inevitable suffering to German prisoners
or interned civilians.

In view of these services, it surely was not
much for the American Minister to ask that a
little delay should be granted to a woman, whose
error, if any, had arisen from impulses of humanity
and from considerations of patriotism. To spare
her Hfe a little longer could not have done the
German cause any possible harm, for she was in
their custody and beyond the power of rendering
any help to her compatriots.

i6o The War and Humanity

Under these circumstances, it would be in-
credible, if the facts were not beyond dispute, that
the request of the United States for a little delay-
was not only refused, but that its Legation was
deliberately misled and deceived until the death
sentence had been inflicted.

This makes the fate of Miss Cavell the concern
of America as much as that of the Lusitania. And
yet we have the already familiar semi-official as-
surance from Washington that while our officials
"unofficially deplore the act, officially they can do
nothing." Concurrently we are told in the
President's Thanksgiving proclamation of 1915
that we should be thankful because we have
"been able to assert our rights and the rights
of mankind," and that this "has been a year of
special blessing for us," for, so the proclamation
adds, "we have prospered while other nations
were at war."

Would it not be better to do more in fact
and less in words to safeguard the rights of
humanity?

President Wilson's initial blunder was in turning
away the Belgian Commissioners, when they first
presented the wrongs of their crucified nation, with
icy phrases as to a mysterious day of reckoning in
the indefinite future. An act of justice now will be

The Case of Edith Cavell i6i

worth a thousand future *' accountings " after the
present agony of the world is ended.

The final scene of the Cavell murder is found in
the simple but poignantly pathetic words of the
chaplain who was permitted to see the victim
a few hours before her death :

On Monday evening, the nth October, I was ad-
mitted by special passport from the German author-
ities to the prison of St. Giles, where Miss Edith
Cavell had been confined for ten weeks. The final
sentence had been given early that afternoon.

To my astonishment and relief I found my friend
perfectly calm and resigned. But this could not
lessen the tenderness and intensity of feeling on
either part during that last interview of almost
an hour.

: Her first words to me were upon a matter con-
cerning herself personally, but the solemn assevera-
tion which accompanied them was made expressedly
in the light of God and eternity. She then added
that she wished all her friends to know that she
willingly gave her life for her country, and said:
"I have no fear nor shrinking ; I have seen death so
often that it is not strange or fearful to me. " She
further said: "I thank God for this ten weeks'
quiet before the end." ' "Life has always been
hurried and full of difficulty. " " This time of rest
has been a great mercy." "They have all been
very kind to me here. But this I would say, stand-
ing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realize that
patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred
or bitterness towards any one. "

i62 The War and Humanity

We partook of the Holy Communion together,
and she received the Gospel message of consolation
with all her heart. At the close of the little service
I began to repeat the words "Abide with me," and
she joined softly in the end.

We sat quietly talking until it was time for me to
go. She gave me parting messages for relations
and friends. She spoke of her soul's needs at the
moment and she received the assurance of God's
Word as only the Christian can do.

Then I said " Good-bye," and she smiled and said,
"We shall meet again. "

The German military chaplain was with her
at the end and afterwards gave her Christian
burial.

He told me: "She was brave and bright to the
last. She professed her Christian faith and that
she was glad to die for her country. She died
like a heroine."

It would be interesting to compare these last
hours of one of the noblest women in English
history to those of that Greek maiden, whom
the genius of Sophocles has glorified in his im-
mortal tragedy. The comparison is altogether
in favour of the English heroine, for while
Antigone went to her death bravely, yet her
final words were those of bitter complaint and
lamentation.

Compare with these laments the Christlike sim-
plicity of Miss Cavell'slast message to the world,

The Case of Edith Cavell 163

and the difference between the noblest Paganism
and the best of Christianity is apparent. The white
light of Calvary illumined her dark cell ! Standing
"in view of God and eternity," she uttered the
deeply pregnant sentence that "patriotism is not
enough." Her executioners had illustrated this, for
the ruthless killing of Edith Cavell for mihtary
purposes was actuated by that perverted spirit of
patriotism which believes that any wrong is sanc-
tified if it serve the State.

The dark secrecy of the execution gave rise to
many false statements with respect to the nature
of her end. As these exaggerated the horror of
the deed and intensified the feeling of indignation
against her executioners, they should be corrected.
Some of these reputed details are too horrible for
statement.

The facts as narrated by the German prison
chaplain, who seems to have been a very noble
and humane man, are very simple. Miss Cavell
walked bravely to the place of her execution and
simply inquired where she should stand. This
was indicated and she was asked whether she
preferred to be blindfolded, to which she re-
plied "No." She folded her arms and then
simply said to the firing squad "I am ready,"
and was then instantly killed.

i64 The War and Humanity

What words could describe the feelings of that
firing squad when they saw the body of this brave
and noble woman lying lifeless at their feet?

Thus died Edith Cavell, assuredly one of the
noblest women in the history of the worid. To her
memory a statue is to be erected in Trafalgar
Square but no art could fashion a statue worthy
of the nobility of her soul.

One can say of her, as was said of William the
Silent, who was also assassinated, that when she
died "the little children cried in the streets."

IV

THE FOREIGN POLICY OF PRESIDENT
WASHINGTON

" The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth
more and more unto the perfect day." — Proverbs.

26S

IV

THE FOREIGN POLICY OF PRESIDENT
. WASHINGTON

The policy of the United States in this great
crisis of history has been influenced in no small de-
gree by a mistaken interpretation of Washington's
farewell address. This interpretation precipitated
a conflict of ideals in the souls of thousands of
Americans and has lead to an inevitable confusion
of thought and consequent indecision.

On the one hand, the traditional sympathy,
which Americans feel for any nation which suffers
from injustice or oppression, would have led to a
more vigorous poHcy on the part of this Govern-
ment; but conflicting with this general sentiment
was a tradition not less dear, the profound respect
which every true American justly feels for the
doctrine of Washington which, predicated upon the
infancy of the Republic, seemingly advised that
the United States should avoid any participation in
political questions having their origin in European
politics.

167

1 68 The War and Humanity

If thus misapprehended, the true doctrine of
Washington requires restatement, not merely in
justice to his memory but because America will
never play the part, which its great material and
moral resources so justly warrant, unless it frees
itself from that which I conceive to be a mis-
interpretation of the real doctrine of Washington.
No statute of mortmain holds property in its
grip more unyieldingly than does the Washington
legend dominate our world outlook.

That his wise precepts, either correctly or
incorrectly interpreted, profoundly affect the
policies of a great nation more than one century
after his death is in itself an extraordinary fact
and an equal tribute to the worth of his character
and the beneficent nature of his services to his
country and to mankind. In life and death he
remains the master American.

In his lifetime, it was easier to state the fact of
this mastery than to analyze its causes. When
the intrepid Kent said to the kingly Lear,
"You have that in your countenance which I
would fain call master — authority," he partly
explained Washington's leadership in his day and
generation.

"Oh, lole, how did you know that Hercules was
a God?" "Because," answered lole, "I was

Foreign Policy of Washington 169

content the moment my eyes fell on him. When I
beheld Theseus I desired that I might see him
offer battle, or at least guide his horses in a chariot
race, but Hercules did not wait for a contest; he
conquered whether he stood or walked or sat or
whatever thing he did. "

Patrick Henry voiced the universal judgment
when he said, speaking of the Second Continental
Congress, that "when you speak of solid opinion
and sound judgment, Colonel Washington is un-
questionably the greatest man upon that floor,"
and that was said of a convention which counted
Franklin, Jefferson, Morris, Adams, and Madison
among its members, and of which the elder
Chatham, the greatest statesman of the English
empire, said:

I must declare and avow that in all my reading
and study, and I have read Thucydides and have
studied and admired the master States of the world,
that for solidity of reason, force of sagacity, and wis-
dom of conclusion, under such a complication of cir-
cumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in
preference to the General Congress at Philadelphia.

Washington's mastery was not due to any
abnormal development of mind or body. As some-
one has said, his genius was that of centricity,
and not of eccentricity.

His power was not that of scientific attain-

170 The War and Humanity

ments, as in the case of Franklin, for he was not a
highly educated man ; nor was it due, as in Jeffer-
son's case, to a glowing imagination, a lofty
idealism, and a gifted pen; nor did he triumph as
Hamilton by unusual administrative genius and a
brilliant personality; nor had he the gift of elo-
quent speech as had Patrick Henry and the elder
Adams, or the acute analytical mind of James
Madison or John Marshall.

Still less was his success that of a vigorously
aggressive and intensely ambitious nature. In all
his life he sought but one thing, and that was
privacy. He preferred the ploughshare to the
sword, and the quiet of Mount Vernon to the
councils of the mighty. He was a shy, diffident
man, who rarely spoke, and seldom offered an
opinion unless it was solicited.

Nothing more strikingly illustrates this fact than
his attitude in the Constitutional Convention,
when he occupied for four months the chair of
presiding officer. No one more than he had in-
spired in his countrymen the ideal of a consolidated
union, and no one perceived more clearly the vital
necessity of such a government, and yet, although
he presided for nearly four months over the
Constitutional Convention and listened, often
with pained and anxious interest, to the vigorous

Foreign Policy of Washington 171

and at times angry debates of its members, he
never spoke but once, and then but briefly.

Before the Convention was even organized, and
while the members who had already gathered were
waiting for a quorum, he laid down — if we can
trust the recollection of Gouvemeur Morris — that
which forever should be the golden rule of states-
manship in this country •

It is too probable that no plan we propose will
be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is
to be sustained. If to please the people we offer
what we oiuselves disapprove, how can we after-
wards defend our work ? Let us raise a standard to
which the wise and honest can repair. The event
is in the hand of God.

And yet this silent man was a more potent
factor in bringing to pass the Constitution of
the United States than any member. His influ-
ence was potently felt throughout the entire de-
liberations. That discordant body could not
separate with its great work undone while the
benignant countenance of Franklin and the master-
ful spirit of Washington remained in their midst.

It is even more remarkable how completely he
took captive the hearts of his country's enemies.
When his death was announced, the flags on many

172 The War and Humanity

English men of war were dipped in honour of his
memory. All England rang with his praise.

Within a month of his death, a leading English
magazine thus described him:

A man superior to all the titles which arrogance
or servility has invented for the decoration of
hereditary rank. ... In his character were re-
newed all the qualities we most admire in the noblest
names of antiquity. . . . The nearest approach to
uniform propriety and perfect blamelessness which
has ever been attained by man, or which is perhaps
compatible with the conditions of humanity.

When these and similar eulogies were spoken in
England of one who had divided the British Em-
pire in twain, the ashes of the controversy were
not yet cold. Even then England regarded him
as the consummate flower of the Anglo-Saxon
race.

His portrait has never been more graphically
drawn in words than by the greatest of English
novelists. In The Virginians, Thackeray says:

What a constancy, what a magnanimity, what
a surprising persistence against fortune ! . . . The
chief of a nation In arms, doing battle with distracted
parties; calm in the midst of conspiracy; serene
against the open foe before him and the darker

Foreign Policy of Washington i73

enemies at his back; Washington, inspiring order
and spirit into troops hungry and in rags; stung
by ingratitude, but betraying no anger, and ever
ready to forgive; in defeat invincible, magnanimous
in conquest, and never so sublime as on that day
when he laid down his victorious sword and sought
his noble retirement — here indeed is a character to
admire and revere, a life without a stain, a fame
without a flaw.

How little Washington could have anticipated
that one hundred and fifteen years after his death
the English people would reverently buy the
home of his ancestors as a perpetual memorial,
and propose to erect within the walls of West-
minster Abbey a statue to his memory.
; Was ever a moral victory over hostile opinion
more complete? Can my readers imagine the
leading publicists of France eulogizing the char-
acter of Bismarck and placing his effigy in the
Pantheon ? Or can they picture a statue to Hinden-
burg in Paris, to JofTre in BerHn, or to von Tirpitz
in Trafalgar Square?

England was not alone in this tribute to a hero.
In life and in death the world honoured him, as
it has no other victorious captain. However
divided the States of the world are in estimating
other men and events, they are united in giving
lasting honor to George Washington.

174 The War and Humanity

Was not the mystery of this triumph because he

Stood serene and down the future saw the golden

beam inclined
To the side of perfect justice, mastered by his faith

divine,
By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's

supreme design.

To eulogize such a personality would be the
idlest superfluity. Nothing can add to or detract
from his pre-eminence among the wise, the good,
and the heroic of men. His teachings with re-
spect to the problems that immediately confront
us as a nation are therefore of surpassing interest.

In this great crisis of human history, when
civilization is swept by a seismic storm of pas-
sionate strife, we may well consider the foreign
policy of George Washington in a somewhat an-
alogous crisis. He helped to steady the Ship of
State in his time and keep it on an even keel,
when it was swept with angry cross seas of human
passion.

There is in some respects an extraordinary
analogy between the condition of the world as it
now is and as it was during the two terms in which
Washington served as Chief Magistrate. Then,
as now, half the world was convulsed with
fratricidal war.

Foreign Policy of Washington 175

As Washington said: "The whole world was in
an uproar." Then, as now, the United States had
a most difficult and delicate task "to steer safely"
— again to quote his words — "between Scylla and
Charybdis."

It may be doubted whether any one but Wash-
ington could have held the United States to-
gether in this era of cyclonic strife a sufficient
time to insure its perpetuity. It was a nation
of about three millions of people, as distant
from the centres of civilization as the Congo is
now, and playing almost as insignificant a part in
the great affairs of the world.

The new Government was a novel experiment,
and, as Washington said, he was obliged to "tread
unbeaten paths." The Republic had neither an
army nor a navy and no credit to organize either.
A substantial part of the public debt was already
in arrears, and the currency of the United States
had sold a few years before at the rate of eight
cents on the dollar.

Its people were by no means united. Their re-
presentatives had with great reluctance, and only
after bitter controversy and prolonged delibera-
tions, adopted the Constitution of the United
States, and the people had ratified it with even
greater hesitation and distrust.

176 The War and Humanity

Our country had always been a shuttlecock of
European nations, and our destinies had thus been
interwoven with the quarrels and intrigues of
European nations.

These conditions would have made the path of
Washington supremely difficult under any cir-
cumstances, but concurrently with the inaugura-
tion of the new Government the French Revolution
exploded as a long suppressed volcano. A few
months after he took the oath of office the Bastille
was stormed and a Paris mob marched on Versailles
and brought the King a virtual captive to the
Tuileries.

Concurrently with Washington's effort to dem-
onstrate the possibility of liberty with law, and
freedom with order, the French Government had
been usurped by the Committee of Public Safety
under Danton, Marat, and Robespierre. Religion
had been dethroned, nearly all existing institu-
tions had been swept away, and license under the
name of reason had been worshipped in the guise
of a naked woman on the altar of Notre Dame.

Nearly all Washington s utterances with respect to
our foreign policy were predicated upon this extraor-
dinary condition, and his wise and sagacious coun-
sels must be read in the light of the conditions and
problems to which they were specifically directed.

Foreign Policy of Washington 177

' Too little attention has, I think, been called
to the moral grandeur of his first inaugural ad-
dress. Both in diction and matter it is a worthy-
predecessor of the first inaugural of Jefferson or
the two similar addresses of Lincoln. After
addressing a fervent suppHcation "to that Al-
mighty Being Who rules over the universe" and
Whose hand he beheld in the foundation of the
United States, he asked :

That the foundation of our national policy will
be laid in the pure and immutable principles of
private morality and the pre-eminence of free
government be exemplified by all the attributes
which can win the affections of its citizens and
command the respect of the world.

He affirmed the truth :

That there exists in the economy and course of
nature an indissoluble union between virtue and
happiness, between duty and advantage, between
the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous
policy and the soUd rewards of public prosperity and
felicity.

And he expressed the belief:

That the propitious smiles of heaven can never
be expected on a union that disregards the eternal
rules of order and right, which heaven itself has
ordained.

1/8 The War and Humanity

Writing to Lafayette on January 29, 1789, he
said:

My endeavours shall be unremittingly exerted,
even at the hazard of my former fame or present
popularity, to extricate my country from the em-
barassments in which it is entangled through want
of credit. ... I think I see its path as clear and
direct as a ray of light. Nothing but harmony,
honesty, industry, and frugality are necessary to
make us a great and happy people.

Thus he prophetically saw the future greatness
of the Republic. No one saw that future with a
clearer vision.

His sagacity is shown in the fact that he had no
illusions about the French Revolution, as had
so many of his contemporaries.

On October 13, 1789, he wrote:

I fear that although it has gone triumphantly
through the first paroxysm, it is not the last it has
to encounter before matters are finally settled. In
a word, the Revolution is of too great magnitude
to be effected in so short a space, and with the loss
of so little blood. . . . The licentiousness of the
people on the one hand, and the sanguinary punish-
ment on the other, will alarm the best disposed
friends to the measure, and contribute not a little to
the overthrow of the object. ... To forbear run-
ning from one extreme to another is no easy matter,
and should this be the case, rocks and shelves, not
visible at present, may wreck the vessel.

Foreign Policy of Washington 179

How rocks and shelves did for a time wreck the
noble vessel, we, with the greater wisdom of the
post factum kind, now know, for the fine aspira-
tions for liberty, which originally inspired the
French Revolution, were only to end in the
iron rule of Napoleon. This Washington fore-
saw, for in this same letter he said that "he re-
garded the renovation of the French Constitution
as one of the most wonderful events in the history
of mankind," but, he added, "my greatest fear
has been that the nation would not be sufficiently
cool and moderate in making arrangements for the
security of liberty."

That great Revolution had its reflex influence
on the United States, and this country was sharply
divided between the partisans of England and
those of France. The intensity of their con-
flicting emotions was so great that the infant
Republic would have been strangled in its very
birth had it not been for one of the wisest acts of
Washington, and yet the very one that cost him
ultimately the most acute anxiety and the greatest
bitterness of spirit.

He selected for his Cabinet the leaders of the
two great parties which were then in process of
formation. One was Alexander Hamilton, the
other Thomas Jefferson. Thus they were obHged

i8o" The War and Humanity

to some extent to submerge their differences in
loyalty to their common chief. Jefferson and
Hamilton were the hostages which the FederaHst
and Democratic parties gave to Washington for
their good behaviour in that period of passionate
party strife.

Nothing more strikingly marks the intensity
of that strife than its continuance to this day, and
the fact that our generation cannot be just, as
Washington was, to both factions and their able
leaders. Each of them was partly right and each
partly wrong. In Washington's time, the one man,
whose wise counsels were above the possibility of
just criticism, was the well poised President.

It is difficult for the followers of Hamilton,
even to this day, to see the force and strength of
Jefferson's position, and that of his party. The
latter's opposition to the Constitution until the first
ten amendments were adopted, was not without
justification, for without those amendments the
Republic might have degenerated into a mob
tyranny. So, too, the opposition of the Jefferson
minority to the tendencies of some of their oppo-
nents was absolutely just, for it is idle at this day
to deny that there was a considerable faction in
this country that would have gladly turned the
Republic into an hereditary autocracy.

Foreign Policy of Washington i8i

In reference to our foreign affairs, there was
also considerable force in the Democratic party's
contention. The sympathy for France was not
without justification, for, apart from the invalu-
able aid that she had given to us in the Revolution,
and the fact that that Revolution, with all its
excesses, represented an uprising of the people
against long continued and indefensible wrong,
there had been an express treaty between France
and the United States, which perpetually obligated
us to support France in any war which might be
waged against her.

On the other hand, the contention of the Feder-
alists had also great justification. To them the
supreme necessity in the infancy of the Republic
was to restore the credit of the United States,
and to consolidate a feeble league of jealous
and discordant States into a harmonious and
consolidated Union. To them, moreover, the
tendencies of the French Revolution were prop-
erly regarded as confusing Hcense with Hberty
and tending to destroy altogether any stability
in Government. The excesses of the Jacobins,
whether in England or the United States, were
clearly foreseen as the submersion of all public
order and the enthronement of anarchy.

Neither Jefferson nor Hamilton were suf-

1 82 The War and Humanity

ficiently broad to sacrifice wholly their personal
controversies and interests to the common
good in a spirit of loyalty to their illustrious
chief.

No fact tried Washington more bitteriy than
this. His whole official career as President was
the most bitter experience of his life. It both
aged and saddened him. It made of him in his
latter days a silent and disillusioned man. At
great sacrifice to his personal interests, at a time
when his own affairs were in such a wretched
condition that — being land poor — he actually
borrowed the money to go from Mount Vernon
to New York to be inaugurated, he had sacrificed
every personal advantage to the public good, and
yet he found his two chief advisers unwilling to
submerge their differences.

Their passionate quarrels so embittered him
that he once said that there was only one mo-
ment since he had been inaugurated that he had
regretted having left his home in Mount Vernon,
and that was "every moment," and that he "would
rather be in the grave than to be the emperor of
the worid."

On August 23, 1792, he addressed a letter to
Jefferson, Hamilton, and Randolph, in which, after
deprecating the fact that internal dissension

Foreign Policy of Washington 183

should "be harrowing and tearing out our vitals,"
he added:

That unless there could be more charity for the
opinion and acts of one and another in governmental
matters ... it would be difficult to manage the
reins of Government, or keep the parts of it together,
. . . and thus the fairest prospect of happiness and
prosperity, that ever was presented to man, will be
lost perhaps forever.

He therefore asked that

instead of wounding suspicions and irritating
charges there may be liberal allowances, mutual
forbearance, and temporary yieldings on all sides.

A little later he writes to Jefferson that

he deeply regrets the differences in opinion which
have arisen and divided you and another principal
officer of the Government. [Hamilton.]

He added a wish that

there can be an accommodation of them by mutual
yieldings. ... I believe that the views of both
of you, to be pure and well meant, and that experi-
ence only will decide which are the better politics.

Unfortunately these quarrels did not cease,
but only increased in intensity, until Washing-

1 84 The War and Humanity

ton's life became so embittered that at the end of
the first term it was with the greatest reluctance,
and only at the earnest solicitation of both Jeffer-
son and Hamilton, that he agreed to accept a re-
election.

It was not alone these two quarrelling statesmen
who thus made his life miserable, when he was try-
ing to construct the edifice of our Government on
a sure fotmdation, but even more irritating to him
were two editors, whose pinpricks and unfair at-
tacks made the old lion roar with anger. To us,
in this later day, when abuse has become so com-
mon that little attention is paid to it, it is diffi-
cult for us to understand the intense sensitiveness
of Washington to the criticism of the press. One
newspaper charged him — to use his own expres-
sion— with deficiencies like those, of "a Nero, or
a notorious defaulter or common pickpocket"
— and it is true that a desire to put a regal
crown on his grey head was persistently charged
by these two "scribblers," as he contemptuously
called them.

With scant co-operation, even from his im-
mediate Cabinet advisers, of whom Knox and
Hamilton were avowed in their sympathies for
England, and Jefferson and Randolph were equally
ardent for France, Washington, with extraordin-

Foreign Policy of Washington 185

ary sagacity, kept the ship on an even keel, for
he saw that nothing could be more fatal than to
steer the infant Republic into the then seething
maelstrom of European politics.

Defending his policy in a letter to Patrick Henry,
he said:

My ardent desire and my aim has been ... to
comply strictly with all our engagements foreign
and domestic and to keep the United States free
from political connection with every other country,
to see them independent of all and under the
influence of none. In a word, I want an American
character that the Powers of Europe may be convinced
that we act for ourselves and not for others. This in
my judgment is the only way to be respected abroad
and happy at home and not by becoming partisans
of Great Britain or France, create dissension, dis-
turb the public tranquillity, and destroy, perhaps
forever, the cement which binds the Union.

In a letter to William Heath, dated May 20,
1797, he expressed the hope that

our citizens would advocate their own cause instead
of that of any other nation under the sun ; that is,
if instead of being Frenchmen or Englishmen in
politics they would be Americans, indignant at any
attempt of either or any other power to establish
an influence in our Councils or presume to sow the
seeds of discord or disunion among us.

i86 The War and Humanity

Washington would have had little patience with
hyphenated Americans of whatever racial origin.
He welcomed the alien to this asylum of the
oppressed, but when such alien took an oath of
allegiance as a naturalized citizen it was in
Washington's eyes no idle form that such applicant
thus renounced all allegiance to any foreign ruler.

Fully conscious that his exhausted country
needed peace and quiet for its convalescence, he
was nevertheless not a "peace at any price " adher-
ent. He did not cherish the illusion that even in
his day our nation could have the secrecy and im-
munity of a hermit nation.

When he delivered in December, 1793, his second
inaugural address, war had already broken out
in Europe and the burden of his message naturally
dealt with the many novel problems which then
confronted the infant Republic. He said:

I cannot recommend to your notice measures
for the fulfilment of our duties to the rest of the
world without again pressing upon you the necessity
of placing ourselves in a condition of complete
defence and of exacting from them the fulfilment of
their duties toward us. The United States ought
not to indulge a persuasion that, contrary to the
order of human events, they will forever keep at a
distance those painful appeals to arms with which
the history of every other nation abounds. There is

Foreign Policy of Washington 187

a rank due to the United States among nations which
will he withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation
of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be
able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the
most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity,
it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.

His policy of neutrality was not however in-
tended as a rigid and invariable policy, for it was
expressly predicated upon the inability of the
Republic to take at that time a commanding posi-
tion in the affairs of the worid. He saw with a
clear vision that while this state of weakness
would not then allow us to follow any policy, other
than one of temporary political isolation, yet that
the time would come when a different policy would
be possible and sometimes advisable.

Thus, in a letter to Gouvemeur Morris, on De-
cember 22, 1795, after reaffirming his policy of
non-intervention in European politics, he says :

Nothing short of self-respect and that justice
which is essential to national character ought to
involve us in the war ; for sure I am if this country
is preserved in tranquility twenty years longer, it may
bid defiance in a just cause to any power whatever.

At the time he thus wrote, even with his pro-
phetic vision he could not fully grasp the possibil-
ity that in less than one hundred and twenty

1 88 The War and Humanity

years we would be a nation of one hundred million
of people, and at least potentially the most power-
ful nation in the world.

It was, however, in the Farewell Address that he
framed in the most deliberate and precise manner
his views as to the foreign policy of the Govern-
ment.

The care and deliberation, with which this im-
mortal valedictory was prepared, is familiar to
all students of our history. He first planned it at
the end of his first term, and it evidently occupied
his thoughts during the whole of his second term.
He submitted drafts of it to Madison, discussed it
with Jefferson and Knox, and finally engaged the
acute mind and eloquent pen of Hamilton in its
final preparation. Thus the Farewell Address,
one of the noblest state documents in the history
of the world, represents the mature wisdom and
deliberate expression of the greatest minds of that
period, aijd above all it speaks the very soul of
Washington himself.

Solemnly he warned us against —

excessive partiality for one foreign nation and
excessive dislike of another. . . . The great rule
of conduct for you in regard to foreign nations is,
in extending our commercial relations to them, to
have as little political connection as possible.

Foreign Policy of Washington 189

Europe has a set of primary interests which to us
have none or a very remote relation. Hence she
must be engaged in frequent controversies, the
causes of which are essentially foreign to our con-
cerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to
implicate ourselves by unofficial ties in the ordinary
vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combina-
tions and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

The reader should note the reiteration of the
word "ordinary." It suggests by necessary im-
plication a belief on the part of Washington that
there might arise extraordinary vicissitudes in
European politics, which would involve the wel-
fare of civilization itself, and as to these he was
careful not to exclude the legitimate right and
interest of the United States to have a voice.

He continues :

Our detached and distant situation invites and
enables us to pursue a different course.

That "detached and distant position" has
been overcome by events which he could not
possibly anticipate. With all his prophetic vision
he never could have anticipated the steamship,
railroad, telephone, cable, or the Marconi wire-
less, which have woven the world into a com-
munity of interests and have thereby promoted a
solidarity of mankind which was not possible in

I90 The War and Humanity

his age, when the nations were detached and
segregated communities.

Again, in the Farewell Address, he expressly
predicates his observations on the conditions which
then prevailed and again prophetically calls atten-
tion to the fact that if the infant Republic simply
abstained in its infancy from intervention in the
destructive policies of the Old World, a day would
come when all nations must reckon with it, for he
says:

If we remain one people under an efficient
government, the period is not far off when we may
defy material injury from external annoyance;
when we may take such an attitude as will cause
the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to
be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations,
under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon
us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation;
when we may choose peace or war as our interests,
guided by justice, shall counsel.

Even more pointedly at the close of the Fare-
well Address he says, in further explanation of his
policy of neutrality in the then pending war
between England and France :

With me a predominant motive has been to
endeavour to gain time to our country to settle and
mature its yet recent institutions, and to progress
without interruption to that degree of strength and

Foreign Policy of Washington '191

consistency which it may be necessary to give it,
humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes.

How little he anticipated the present day when
assuredly we have, as no other nation, to use his
expression, "the command of our own fortunes"!

Did Washington intend to commit this country
for all time to a poHcy of political isolation?

I cannot believe it. When he strongly and saga-
ciously advised his country against having "alli-
ances" or "political connections" with other
countries, the precise meaning which he gave to
those terms must be steadily borne in mind.

Civilization was then a community of detached
and [isolated States, between whom there was
no co-operative effort for the maintenance of in-
ternational law and the preservation of peace.
Alliances and treaty relations between nations
were only for purposes of offence and defence and
bound the respective nations in a community of
purely selfish interest. International arbitration
was almost unknown, while such a federation of
the world, as was realized in the two Hague con-
ventions, was as undreamed a possibility as Mar-
coni's instantaneous transmission of news "by
the sightless couriers of the air."

It was an age in which each nation was an

192 The War and Humanity

Ishmael and international morality was almost
non-existent.

The great ideal, to which mankind will march
with increased rapidity after the close of the
present war, namely, the joint responsibiUty of
civiliization for the preservation of peace and the
maintenance of international law, was also far
beyond the ken of Washington's day.

If the world shall hereafter move to this
"consummation so devoutly to be wished" of
collective responsibility, and if all nations shall
unite to suppress any disturbance of the world's
peace, as in the nature of civil war, can it be
that Washington intended that in such a move-
ment towards perpetual peace this Republic
should surround itself by a Chinese wall of
political isolation?

' Is there anything in his teachings or career which
justifies the assumption that he did not intend
his Republic to realize its full destiny as a great,
masterful, and beneficent people in proportion to
its strength?

' Could he, who witnessed and directed the mys-
terious and puissant impulse, which led the colo-
nies to throw off their allegiance to Great Britain
and assume an independent station among the
nations of the world, ignore the fact that that

Foreign Policy of Washington 193

instinct for expanding power would remain with
us while Anglo-Saxon blood flowed in our veins?
If he were alive today, would he reject the loco-
motive for the stagecoach or the repeating rifle for
the flint-lock musket?

Had he Uved to see his nation in its lusty youth
on the banks of the Mississippi, and later reach-
ing the shores of the Pacific, and still later had
seen its flag greeting the rising sun in the har-
bour of Manila, would he, of all men, accept a
policy which seeks to limit the power and influence
of the RepubHc to the Western Hemisphere, and
which attempts to surrender the world-wide and
beneficent influence in the affairs of man, to which
the greatness of its people and the strength of
its resources alike entitle it ?

Those who would forever keep the Republic in
her swaddling clothes, and who for this purpose
invoke the great name of Washington, should
first convince us that if he were the President of
potentially the most powerful nation, he would
advise it to yield precedence to lesser and weaker
Powers. Would he, of all men, ignore the fact
that as America has derived from civilization in-
estimable rights and privileges, it owes and should
recognize its corresponding duty to be a potent
and beneficent force in the councils of mankind?
u

194 The War and Humanity

Nothing would amaze Washington more, if he
could revisit the glimpses of the moon, than to
behold a great and potent nation limiting its
beneficent power by a tradition of isolation, which,
however suited to his time, is plainly ill adapted to
a more complicated civilization. Washington, as
all the other great actors of the Revolutionary epic,
had his traditions and an ancestry in which he
gloried, and yet he was forced by the logic of
events to disregard both. When the Revolution
came through unforeseen circumstances, nothing
was further from the purposes of the founders of
the Republic than separation from England.

Said John Adams: "There was not a moment
during the Revolution when I would not have
given everything I possessed for a restoration to
the state of things before the contest began,
provided we could have had a sufficient security
for its continuance." Dr. Franklin, the most
trusted, sagacious, and farseeing statesman of his
generation, said before the battle of Lexington
that he had not heard the "least expression of a
wish for a separation, or a hint that such a thing
would be advantageous to America." John Jay
said: "During the course of my life and until the
second petition of Congress in 1775, I never had
heard an American of any class, or of any de-

Foreign Policy of Washington 195

scription, express a wish for the independence of the
colonies." The author of the Declaration of
Independence said: "It has always been, and still
is, my opinion and belief that our country was
prompted and impelled to independence by
necessity, not by choice. I never heard a whisper,
before the commencement of hostilities, of a dis-
position, to separate from Great Britain. " Wash-
ington, in 1774, denounced as "malevolent false-
hoods" the assertions that "there is any intention
in the American colonies to set up for independent
States." In 1776 he wrote: "When I took com-
mand of the army I abhorred the idea of inde-
pendence ; now I am convinced nothing else will
save us."

Building better than they knew — as all master
builders of a nation — the founders of the Ameri-
can Republic were led, by impulses which they
could not fully understand, to disregard every
tradition which they held dear, to renounce
allegiance to their King, separate from the great
English Empire, make formal alliance with their
enemy, France, and create a Union of which
each had been but too jealous.

The Constitution of the United States was not
the deliberate wish of the people, but was created
by their necessities ; it met no one's entire approval,

196 The War and Humanity

was only adopted after bitter debates of four
months' duration, and was the result of a com-
promise begotten by the stern and pressing
necessities of the situation. Only a choice between
chaos and a Constitution induced the jarring,
discordant, and jealous States to surrender any
portion of their sovereignty, and yet this Constitu-
tion, in its present form the child of no brain and
the creation of no wish, is the admiration of the
world, and has been pronounced by the most
scholarly statesman of our time, to have been
"the most perfect ever struck off by the brain
and purpose of man at a given time."

Nor has this truth been less marked in our own
time and generation. The Emancipation Pro-
clamation clearly violated the traditional policy
af America which recognized the existence of
slavery. Jefferson's stern denunciation of the
slave trade, which he had inserted in the first
draft of the great Declaration, was stricken out by
Congress, and the Constitution itself distinctly
recognized the existence of this baleful domestic
institution. Its destruction was not due to the
conscious and deliberate purpose of any statesman.
Lincoln at the beginning of his administration
distinctly disclaimed any purpose to interfere
with it, and it was not until the blood, which had

Foreign Policy of Washington 197

been shed from Bull Run to Antietam, cried as
from the ground that again this tradition was
destroyed. No one recognized this more cleariy
than did the great war President, and in his second
inaugural he plainly voiced his beUef that not only
the removal of slavery but the Civil War itself
had come by no human wisdom, but by a divine
judgment.

BHnd adherence to tradition is not the highest
patriotism but is a form of intellectual slavery
unworthy of a free and progressive people. The
God of Nations never intended that wisdom
should die either with any man, generation, race,
or epoch. Least of any people should America
doubt the "increasing purpose of the ages" and
the "widening of thought with the process of the
suns."

The founders of the Republic recognized that
wise nations, as wise individuals, change their
minds when occasion justifies, but fools never.
We should not attribute to them an infallibility
which they did not claim for themselves.

The decadence of Spain, which cost her the
empire of the world, was due to her "inordinate
tenacity of old opinions, old beUefs, and old
habits," which Buckle finds to be her predomi-
nant national characteristic. He adds:

198 The War and Humanity

By encouraging the notion that all the truths
most important to know are already known, they
repress those aspirations and dull that generous
confidence in the future without which nothing
really great can be achieved. A people who regard
the past with too wistful an eye will never bestir
themselves to help the arm of progress. To them
iniquity is wisdom and every improvement is a
dangerous innovation.

Even if a fair interpretation of all that Washing-
ton wrote justified the belief that not only tempor-
arily but permanently he opposed any departure
from the policy of isolation, yet the present
generation of Americans, living under widely
different circumstances than those that prevailed
at the beginning of the Republic, would neces-
sarily be constrained to decide questions of foreign
policy in the light of the living present rather than
of the past, for "new occasions teach new duties"
and time may "make ancient good uncouth. "

To hold a virile and masterful people in the
leash of an obsolete tradition is impossible.
Sooner or later it will break free and run its
destined course.

It is clearly tmjust to the memory of Wash-
ington to attribute to him, who broke with the
traditions of his day, a policy of timid subser-
vience to obsolete traditions.

Foreign Policy of Washington 199

Remembering his masterful nature and the
courage with which he adapted his course to
circumstances, it is inconceivable that Washing-
ton, if his hand were today upon" the helm of
power, would permit his country to pursue any
selfish and ignoble course.

If he re-entered today the beautiful Capital,
which so fittingly bears his name, and learned
how that "rank due to the United States among
nations," which he so confidently predicted for
it, had been impaired by the unatoned murder
for over twelve months of American citizens
on the high seas, I think he would give to the
man or men responsible for this betrayal of the
best ideals of American diplomacy, such a look
as he gave Charles Lee upon the battlefield of
Monmouth.

If Washington's foreign policy be thus in part
limited to his times and the then prevailing con-
ditions, yet other parts are of such eternal verity
as to be a chart for his successors for all time.
Thus he says :

Observe good faith and justice towards all nations.
Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion
and morality enjoin this conduct, and can it be that
good policy docs not equally enjoin it? It will be
worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant
period, a great nation to give to mankind the mag-

200 The War and Humanity

nanimous and too novel example of a people always
guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.

That is a policy whose infinite truth and value
"time cannot wither or custom stale." This is the
chart by which America can be safely guided
throughout all future time. To observe that policy
in its spirit and in its letter is to be true to Washing-
ton, and if thus true, America cannot then be false
to any nation. Such is Washington's counsel
to this generation of Americans, for the words
of his Farewell Message are instinct with im-
mortal life and will outHve all the utterances of
Hving Americans.

If Washington thus enjoins his countrymen to
"cultivate peace and harmony" with other nations
it is only when he has first admonished them to
"observe good faith and justice." Justice is not
a mere negation. It is not satisfied merely by in-
action. It is a positive, affirmative force, which
entails active duties as well as passive rights.

What were Washington's views in the last days
of his life, and of the eighteenth century?

Europe was then rocking with revolution. Na-
poleon had destroyed the last remnant of free
government and had seized the reins of power as
First Consul. All Europe was uniting against him

Foreign Policy of Washington 201

and'^mankind was destined to see fifteen years of
bloody strife, which were only to culminate on the
field of Waterloo.'

While Washington was not destined to see this,
for he died shortly before Napoleon won his
great victory on the plains of Marengo, yet we
can imagine the old soldier in his retirement at
Mount Vernon following with eager vision the
extraordinary developments in the Old World and
the rising career of the new Caesar. Can we not
imagine him in that last autumn of his life,
seated on his porch in the gathering twilight,
— emblematic of the dying day of his life — and
silently gazing upon the Potomac, as it moved
toward the sea, a symbol of the infinite mystery
of Time?^

It was on such an October evening a few months
before he died, with the autumn leaves falling
from the trees upon the green lawns of his much-
loved home, that he retired to his study and wrote
in a letter to a friend his last expression of opinion
as to the affairs of the world, and what he thus
wrote could be applied with such rare propriety
to the conditions of the present hour, as ex-
pressing what would be his opinion if he were
alive today, that I shall venture to quote it.
He said:

202 The War and Humanity

The affairs of Europe have taken a most impor-
tant and interesting turn. What will be the final
results of the uninterrupted successes of the com-
bined army ... it is not for a man at a distance
of 3000 miles from the great theatre of action to
predict, but he may wish, and ardently wish from
principles of humanity, and for the benevolent pur-
pose of putting a stop to the further effusion of
human blood that the successful Powers may know
at what point to give cessation to the sword for the
purpose of negotiation. . . . My own wish is to
see everything settled upon the best and surest
foundation for the peace and happiness of mankind
without regard to this, that, or the other nation. A
'more destructive sword never was drawn, at least in
modem times, than this war has produced. It is
time to sheathe it and give peace to mankind.

Thus spoke and still speaks the world's noblest
citizen, and, notwithstanding the blackness of the
present hour, to that ideal of peace mankind is
steadily marching. At its head is still the great
soldier, who, if "first in war," was also "first in
peace"; for

the path of the Just is as a shining light, that
shineth more and more unto the perfect day.

V

"WHERE THERE IS NO VISION"

' Where there is no vision, the people perish. " — Isaiah.

303

"WHERE THERE IS NO VISION"

Few, if any, aspects of this great world crisis
should give the thoughtful American greater
concern than the altered attitude of other nations
to his country. To provincial Americans the
judgment of the world may be a matter of in-
difference, but its more thoughtful citizens cannot
ignore the portentous possibilities involved in
this changed attitude. Apart from the practical
possibihties of the new situation, in which the
United States so suddenly finds itself, is the
sentimental consideration that the United States
no longer enjoys the respect and goodwill of
the world in the same ungrudging measure as
heretofore/

Those who affect indifference in this matter

may well be reminded that in the very foundation

of the United States its great founders, who were

assuredly men of vision, recognized in the very

preamble to the Declaration of Independence that

a "decent respect to the opinions of mankind"

205

2o6 The War and Humanity

imposed upon this, as any nation, moral responsi-
bilities and practical obligations. A nation can
say quite as truly as an individual:

*' Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,

Is the immediate jewel of their souls.

Who steals my purse steals trash. 'Tis something;
nothing.

'Twas mine; 'tis his; and has been slave to thou-
sands.

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him

And makes me poor indeed."

This altered attitude of foreign nations towards
the United States can be discussed from three
angles, namely, the respective attitudes of the
central powers, the allied powers, and the neutral
States.

So far as the Teutonic powers are concerned,
the friendship, which they once had for the United
States, is wholly gone, and a feeling of intense
hatred has taken its place. The peoples of those
nations feel, and with some justification, that we
prevented their early and complete triumph, with
all its immeasurable consequences, by supplying
to the allied countries the indispensable munitions
of war. America thus helped to negative the enor-
mous advantage which forty years of efficient

"Where There Is No Vision" 207

pieparation had given Germany. It is possible
that if the United States had not sent to Eng-
land, France, and Russia more than a bilUon
dollars' worth of war supplies, those nations
might have failed in their great struggle through
a fatal disparity in war equipment.

This possibility the Teutonic Empires have
magnified into a certainty and have thus at-
tributed the defeat of their aims and the colos-
sal losses, which they have sustained, to the
practical intervention of the United States
through the utilization by the Allies of its vast
industrial energies. In a purely technical sense,
the United States has been neutral, but in a practi-
cal sense it has been a benevolent ally to England,
France, and Russia in coming to their aid with its
vast financial and industrial resources.

If this were not enough, our threat to sever
diplomatic relations, if the Teutonic powers did
not cease their unlawful submarine activities,
would amply explain the unquestioned hostile
attitude of the Central Powers to the United
States, for while the saner German statesmen may
have recognized, as has the German Chancellor,
that the submarine campaign, owing to the
efficiency of the British Navy, has not met expec-
tations, yet the masses of the German people

2o8 The War and Humanity

believe that the economic strangulation of Ger-
many, due to the British blockade, could be
prevented if Germany persisted in its submarine
activities and succeeded in inflicting like suffer-
ing upon the civilian population of England.

"Gott straffe England — und Amerika" is now
on the lips of thousands of Germans, and in the
portentous years to come the United States will
probably hear the echoes of a defeated and half-
starving nation's curses.

So far as the neutral nations are concerned, they
looked at the beginning of this struggle to the
United States, as the greatest of the neutral
nations, to voice as a leader the moral authority of
civilization, and to a considerable extent they
looked in vain. As a result the United States has
fallen in their estimation from the high place
which it once occupied as the land of exalted
idealism.

The attitude of the allied nations towards the
United States is one of disappointment and dis-
illusion. They do not feel hostile to the United
States, but, on the contrary, for practical and
sentimental reasons sincerely desire its friendship.
They are eager to learn the American point of
view and are quite willing to take into considera-
tion any circumstances which explain the negative

"Where There Is No Vision" 209

attitude of the United States in the greatest moral
crisis of civilization. They partly understand
the historical reasons which made inevitable the
American policy of neutrality, but they fail to
understand why, when the very foundations of
civilization are crumbling, the United States, with
its traditional devotion to the loftiest humani-
tarianism, should remain silent and inactive.
Undoubtedly they do not take sufhciently into
account the extraordinary difficulties of America's
position in this world crisis, nor do they appreciate
at their full value either the extraordinary services
which the United States has rendered to the cause
of the Allies or the unselfish motives which per-
mitted the industrial energies of America to be
harnessed in their behalf.

Deeply impressed with this fact, the author
went to England in the summer of 1916 and made
nine addresses in England and one in Paris, in
which he endeavourfed to show that the growing
resentment in England and France towards the
United States was not justified. The reader will
find in a later portion of this volume the principal
address which the author made in England (pp.
249-270). The very favourable reception which
this and similar addresses received in England and
France and the extent to which it contributed to

«4

210 The War and Humanity

the modification of this hostile attitude evidence
the sincere desire of the English and French peo-
ples to understand the American point of view
and to remain the friends of America.

The address, however, was avowedly only half of
a truth. The author did not attempt to discuss,
for reasons which he explained, the failure of the
Wilson Administration to play a part in this
world struggle commensurate with America's power
and destiny. As von Bethmann-Hollweg's phrase
"a scrap of paper" will be regarded for generations
to come as expressing in a few words the spirit
of Germany in provoking this war, similarly Mr.
Wilson's most unfortunate phrase, "too proud to
fight" will be accepted by posterity as express-
ing in a single phrase the policy of the Wilson
Administration.

The fact is undeniable that the United States
has missed its supreme opportunity to assume the
moral leadership of the world, and it has paid the
penalty of its inaction by an immeasurable im-
pairment in its prestige as a great power. Fortu-
nately this loss is not necessarily permanent and
it is not too late for the United States to vindicate
its position in civilization as one of the Master
States of the world.

It would not be just to attribute this temporary

"Where There Is No Vision" 211

failure wholly to timid and unwise leadership. Un-
doubtedly the primary cause of America's inactive
attitude is the fact that the Wilson Administration
had neither vision nor courage. President Wilson,
fresh from his classroom at Princeton, was neither
by temperament nor education in statecraft fitted
to guide his nation in one of the stormiest crises of
human history. He beUeved that he could dispose
of any crisis by evading it with a phrase, much as
Mr. Micawber rejoiced that another debt was
paid when he gave his creditor a new note. But
this timid, shifting, vacillating leadership would
not have been tolerated unless it had had some
sanction in public opinion, for the fact seems
imdeniable that while a very great majority of the
American people did sympathize with the Allies
and were willing to contribute to their cause as
individuals, yet at no time did a majority dissent
to the policy of inaction, which was believed by
many to have its full justification in keeping the
United States out of the war.

This attitude of the American people was not
due, as so many foreign critics think, either to
avarice, selfishness, or cowardice. None of these
traits is characteristic of the American people.
The love of gain exercised little, if any, influ-
ence upon their decision nor was this nation in

212 The War and Humanity

any respect inspired by the spirit of cowardice,
even though its administrators did, when the moral
authority of the Republic was mocked by disloyal
aliens, suggest as an excuse for inaction the craven
policy of "safety first." The reason lies much
deeper and seems to me to be due to a certain lack
of vision in the United States whenever its foreign
relations are under consideration.

The fact is that America through more than a
century of intensive development has remained so
introspective that it is difficult for it to consider
any question in its just relations to the rest of
the world. From the beginning it has been an
isolated nation. The whole course of its national
life has been introspective and the consequent re-
striction of its political activities to purely domes-
tic problems has tended to limit and impair its
outward vision.

Let me explain this by a literary analogy. A
great German poet, Freiligrath, once said that
Germany was Hamlet, and I think it was Lessing
who said that Hamlet was an Englishman born in
Germany. Time was when the analogy of Ger-
many to the introspective and sentimental dreamer
of Elsinore was altogether justified, for in the
period of its history from the Napoleonic wars
until the revolution of 1848, when the influence of

** Where There Is No Vision" 213

Prussia upon Germany was comparatively slight,
and the German people were dominated by a wave
of lofty and noble humanitarianism, there was
much similarity between the sentimental and intro-
spective Germany of that day and Shakespeare's
amiable dreamer. But the Germany of Bismarck,
wonderfully efficient and inordinately ambitious
and aggressive, has now no resemblance to Hamlet.

The real Hamlet of nations is America. It
has the virtues and the faults of Shakespeare's
amiable and attractive young Prince. It, too,
"thinks too precisely upon the event," and how
often in the last twelve months the "native hue of
resolution has been sicklied o'er with the pale cast
of thought."

The keynote to the mystery of Hamlet was
sounded partly by Goethe and partly by Cole-
ridge. Goethe showed that the tragedy of Hamlet
lay in the fact that although he was otherwise
superbly equipped for the task imposed upon him
by Heaven to avenge his murdered father and
drive the usurper from the throne, he yet found
himself through the deficiencies of his own nature
unequal to the task, and could only cry in a tone
of weak dejection :

/'The time is out of joint, oh! cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right ! "

214^ The War and Humanity

Coleridge's more subtle and profound analysis
explains the reason for this deficiency in the fact
that every man should preserve a nice equilibrium
between his subjective and his objective faculties,
between introspective thought and the outer
world of action, into which the healthy soul trans-
mutes its thoughts and purposes. In Hamlet,
Coleridge found ' ' an enormous intellectual activity
and a proportionate aversion to real action." As
Hamlet failed in his great mission and in dreamy
introspection "let go by the important acting of
the dread command," similarly the United States
which in its foreign relations has always been a
dreamer, failed in the greatest crisis of human
history to exert an influence proportionate to its
power and standing, largely because its soul has
been introspective. Indeed the analogy could be
pushed farther. The first folio reading makes the
Queen say of Hamlet in the duel scene :

"He's fat and scant of breath."

Is not America's fine instinct of justice somewhat
dulled by too much material prosperity ?

It has for so many years exhausted its energies
in purely domestic problems, and has enjoyed the
ease of such amazing and superabundant wealth
that it has found itself in this world-wide crisis ill-

''Where There Is No Vision" 215

adapted to meet the obvious responsibilities which
that crisis had imposed upon it.

The vastness of America tends to the localiza-
tion of its thoughts and activities. When the
Republic was born, and only extended from the
Atlantic seaboard to the Alleghanies, it was
believed by many responsible statesmen that it
could not possibly long exist over so great an area
as even the eastern border of the continent.
Frederick the Great had said in 1772 that history
could be searched in vain for a single instance
where a Republican form of government had long
existed over an extended area of territory. It is
altogether probable that if it had not been for the
steamship, the telegraph, the railroad, and the
printing press, weaving together by the centripetal
influences of steam and electricity the scattered
communities of our country, that the prediction of
Frederick the Great would have been justified.

These elemental economic forces have created a
reasonable unity of spirit in America's domestic
problems, but in the matter of exterior relations,
many of its people still take in the full noontide of
the twentieth century a very parochial view of
world politics.

One result of the wide variety of local conditions
is its dual form of government, which seeks to

2i6 The War and Humanity

decentralize authority and carry the principle of
local autonomy to the furthest possible limit. In
practice, if not in theory, the United States has
been in the past a congeries of nations. A con-
glomeration is not necessarily a unit, as it has
found to its cost in the last two fateful years.

The heterogeneous character of its population,
representing as it does the blood of all the great
European nations, necessarily impairs that sense
of homogeneity, without which the unity of a
people cannot be fully developed. The United
States has given hostages to every civilized nation,
whose subjects have crowded to its shores and
become citizens, that it will not antagonize the
land of their nativity even in a just cause, and
while this makes for peace, yet its influence as a
world power thereby suffers an inevitable emascu-
lation in power and dignity.

A striking evidence of the parochial character
of American politics is shown by the indifference
with which, until recent years, the American people
evaded the subject of military preparedness.

At the end of the Civil War the United States
was the first military power of the world. It had
at that time a trained and equipped army of a
million men. Few armies of equal size could at
that time be instanced, but the great army of

"Where There Is No Vision" 217

Grant, after the final review in the city of Wash-
ington, quietly melted into civil life and thereafter
and until the Spanish-American War, the United
States had an army which barely exceeded in
numbers the police force of New York. Its navy,
too, was almost non-existent until in Mr. Cleve-
land's Administration its rebuilding began.

This policy of unpreparedness was the more
extraordinary as the history of the United States
was replete with instances which demonstrated
its folly. One of the gratifying evidences that
America is at last awakening from its dream of
isolation is the swift development of the present
move towards military preparedness; but it has
not been sufficiently rapid to prepare the nation
adequately for the possible eventuaHties of the
coming years. Moreover, may it not be as evan-
escent as an emotional religious revival? Unless
America shall gain a wider vision of its duties
and potentiaUties as a world power, the reply
must be in the affirmative.

The fact that the United States was for nearly a
year on the very brink of war with Germany and
that it did not lie exclusively in America to deter-
mine whether peaceful relations should continue,
did not give to the movement for preparedness the
impetus which could be reasonably expected in a

2i8 The War and Humanity

nation which is not introspective. The indifference
to external danger made our Government in-
different to the necessity of preparation. When
the clouds had commenced to gather and a war
with Germany was possible any day, President
Wilson for a time behttled the movement for pre-
paredness and denied its necessity, and it was not
until the crisis had lasted for some months that he
suddenly shifted his position and advocated the
movement for preparedness.

That preparedness is an indispensable policy, if
America is to discard its policy of isolation and
play the part in the great drama of history to which
its greatness entitles it, is clear to those who, with
expert knowledge, have considered the ability of
the United States to defend itself from attack.

To these it is clear that its navy cannot alone
relieve the United States from the necessity of mili-
tary preparation. The fact that it is in the most
favourable view the third navy of the world in
itself shows that at least two nations could attack
the United States with superior force at sea. It
must guard two oceans and 21,000 miles of coast
Hne, and as the invader could probably select the
time and place of the invasion, it is obvious that
America could not safely rely upon its full naval
strength at any one point of attack.

"Where There Is No Vision" 219

What then as to its land defences ?

Fourteen years ago the then Secretary of War
appointed a General Staff for the Army. This
General Staff, composed of experts who had given
their lives to a careful study of the problem and
who first sought the opinion of nearly every officer
of the Army, formulated a report in the year 19 12,
which until the present time has made little, if
any, impression upon the American people, and,
but for the events of the last two years prob-
ably never would have.

This report showed, among other things, that it
was possible for at least three of the great nations
of the world, within ten to thirty days, to put
an army ranging from 100,000 to 200,000 men
upon the shores of America, and in that they
were confirmed by the ablest military authorities
of the world, namely, the German General Staff,
who in their unceasing study of military problems
before the present war, had, let us hope as a purely
academic problem, reached the conclusion that
they could put within ten days approximately
200,000 men upon the Atlantic Coast.

In 1916, the experts of the United States War
College made a much more specific calculation,
based upon the existing tonnage of the two na-
tions, which were taken to work out the problem.

220 The War and Humanity

They found that Germany, utilizing only one-half
of such total possible tonnage, could land on the
Atlantic shores 387,000 men and 81,000 animals
within sixteen days and 440,000 additional men
within thirty days thereafter, while Japan could
land over 95,000 men and 24,000 animals within
twenty-three days on the Pacific coast, and
142,000 additional men and 36,000 animals within
forty-one days thereafter.

The General Staff in the report of 191 2 then con-
sidered what forces the United States had to oppose
such an invasion, and, leaving aside the qnestion of
what the Navy might possibly do, they found that
the Army of the United States numbered about
90,000 men. Of these 18,000 were necessarily de-
tailed to the coast fortifications, and after elimina-
ting about 38,000 men, who inadequately guard
America's far-flung colonial possessions, there
remained as a possible mobile army not more than
49,000 men. Allowing for useless army posts, the
mobile army, which would mainly oppose such an
invasion, would not exceed 35,000 men.

These figures are somewhat increased by small
additions to the Army since 191 2 and a sub-
stantial but wholly inadequate increase has been
made in 191 6, but the poverty of America's
military resources remains unaltered and unques-

"Where There Is No Vision" 221

tionable. This was strikingly shown in the Summer
of 19 1 6, when it required all this mobile force and
the National Guard to protect the Mexican fron-
tier from roving bandits.

Prior to the critical period, through which we are
now passing, it had been supposed that the trans-
portation of large armies across the ocean would be
a practical impossibility, and the acquiescence of
the American people, until within the last twelve
months, in the defenceless state of America was
presumably predicated in part upon this belief.
England transported over one hundred and thirty
thousand men across the English Channel within
ten days with scant preliminary preparation, and
while the exact figures are unknown, it must
have transported to the Dardanelles at least three
hundred thousand men within an incredibly short
space of time. Over two hundred thousand men
were transported by England to South Africa in
the Boer War, a longer journey than from Europe
to America. England has transported in the last
two years more than a million and a half men
across the English channel.

These recent instances show that the oceans are
no longer impassable barriers for the once isolated
American nation, but on the contrary the smoothest
and most open of pathways to any invader, alwaj^s

222 The War and Humanity

assuming that its naval defence shall for any reason
break down.

The United States also has a State militia, esti-
mated to be about 120,000 men, of whom this
General Staff, after a very careful inquiry, estimated
about 86,000 to be reasonably effective and avail-
able soldiers. But even adding the National Guard
to the 35,000 mobile troops of the Regular Army,
there would then be in the most optimistic view
about 120,000 men, scattered over a vast continent,
to meet an invasion, which in the case of either
Japan or Germany could easily consist of over
250,000 men.

The United States has, it is true, coast defences,
some of which are very effective in one direction,
the approach by the sea.

Sandy Hook, one of the most powerful coast
defences in America, is, for example, chiefly valu-
able in defending the entrance of New York harbour
against an invading fleet. An army landing, as
the United States army landed in Cuba, from
transports at any point on the New Jersey
coast could very readily take Sandy Hook from
the rear, unless it were guarded by an effective
land force, and the other defences of New York
might speedily crumble by a similar attack from
the rear.

"Where There Is No Vision" 223

Thus the most opulent city of the country could
be speedily taken by the invaders.

Equally vulnerable and undefended Is Philadel-
phia, a great commercial and manufacturing city,
from which the intersecting railways from New York
to the south and west could be cut off with little
difficulty, if that city were once captured by an
invading foe. The fortifications that guard this
city of a million and a half people are guarded by
220 men, manning three forts, of which two (Fort
Delaware and Fort Mott) are virtually in the
hands of caretakers. The remaining fort (Fort
Dupont) has 186 men to guard the prosperous
cities of the Delaware.

In the official report of Brigadier-General
Weaver, Chief of Coast Artillery, made public on
December 17, 19 15, it is stated that the coast de-
fences of the United States need over 21,000 men
to equip them, and General Weaver adds that in
their present undermanned condition, these coast
defences "would prove a source of positive danger
instead of protection. "

Under the policy, as formulated in 1908, Amer-
ica's coast defences were to be manned one-half by
regulars and one-half by the state militia, and
the little dependence that can be placed upon the
latter may be measured by the fact that the States

224 The War and Humanity

have not furnished, as late as December, 19 15,
within ten thousand of their quota.

General Weaver adds that guns that cost over
$40,000,000 are unmanned, and that there are 128
important guns without men behind them. Thus
only one-half of the ten-inch cannon have anyone
to fire them. If fired simultaneously there is not
enough powder to fire the coast-defence guns a
single hour.

The American Army is also singularly deficient
in the most approved appliances of war, such as
the aeroplanes. These are the eyes of the Army
and without them modern artillery loses half of
its effectiveness. The author, in the last week of
July, 1 91 6, was privileged to witness for three
days the battle of the Somme and although only a
layman in military matters, he was deeply im-
pressed with the fact that the consistent successes
of the English and French in that titanic battle were
due in part to the mastery of the air. During
that period I saw few German aeroplanes cross
the Allies' lines, but each day I saw many of the
Allies' cross from hour to hour to the German
lines and direct the artillery fire.

Undoubtedly the aeroplane has thus revolution-
ized the art of warfare. Without their use the great-
est artillery is Hke the blinded giant in the Odyssey.

"Where There Is No Vision" 225

It is strange that America, which invented the
aeroplane, should be the slowest of nations to
utilize its infinite possibilities.

Wilbur and Orville Wright, who, working si-
lently in their bicycle repair shop in Dayton,
Ohio, realized the dream of Leonardo da Vinci
and made possible the aeroplane, with which man
outflies the eagles of the air, fully saw the mar-
vellous possibilities of their invention, for little
has been done in this war by the aeroplane that
Wilbur Wright did not predict to the author on the
night when that great inventor made the first
flight over the Harbor of New York, flying from
Governor's Island to Grant's Tomb. And yet it
has been stated, and not denied, that the Army
of the United States, in its recent operations in
Mexico, had at first only ten aeroplanes, and of
these only a few were fit for service.

The author visited one of the manufactories of
aeroplanes in France, at which 2000 men were
employed and in which there were at least 500
aeroplanes of various kinds, awaiting transport to
the front.

The lack of interest in America in the develop-
ment of the aeroplane, where it was invented,
is but another illustration of the indisposition

of the American people, due to their habit of
If

226 The War and Humanity

introspection, to consider any adequate military
preparation.

The inventive genius of America is not at fault,
for nearly every invention, which has revolution-
ized the art of war in the present conflict, is due
to America. The steamship, the telegraph, the
cable, the submarine, the telephone, the machine
gun, the aeroplane, and, it is claimed, even the
steel-sheathed motor trucks, which, like gigantic
Dinosaurs, have only recently moved across the
battlefield, are all the product of American in-
ventors, as an American diplomat recently took
occasion to remind a German diplomat who was
asserting the dependence of America upon Ger-
many for its industrial inventions.

America is capable of being the first military
power in the world. Apart from the inventive
genius of its people, it has a virile population
of a high degree of intelligence, out of which,
as was shown in the great Civil War, an army
can be fashioned second to none in courage and
efficiency.

Apart from the present disparity in the military
resources of the United States and those of any
one of the great Powers, two significant facts
must be borne in mind.

The first is the tendency of nations to fight in

"Where There Is No Vision" 22^

groups. This fact makes it improbable that if
America shall become involved in a war with any
foreign power, that that foreign power would
fight alone, while America, with its opposition
to "entangling alliances," would probably be
obliged to rely upon its own resources. It is not
impossible that America might be simultaneously
attacked on the east by some great European
power and on the west by an Oriental power,
and its defensive strength would thereby be
cut in half, especially as the continuing use of
the Panama Canal seems conjectural.

The second significant fact is that future wars,
the possibility of which must necessarily be as-
sumed in view of the intense hatreds engendered
by the present conflict between leading nations,
will be fought on an even larger scale than the
present unprecedented conflict. The prospect
for humanity in this aspect is literally appalling.
A distinguished Russian General has had sufficient
courage to look into the abysmal future and he
makes a prediction which may well stagger human-
ity, even though his prophecies may be in part
exaggerated.

In the Russkoje Slowo, General Skugarewski,
commander of the Russian infantry now fighting
on the eastern front, says:

228 The War and Humanity

It is Impossible to predict now the outcome of
the present war, but nevertheless we can readily
picture in our minds what the next war will be like.
It will follow directly on the heels of the present
conflict. How soon this new war will begin depends
on how the present war will end and who will be
the victors. If Germany is not thoroughly defeated,
another war will be likely within ten years. In
the meantime every country will be busy preparing
for it. That coming war will surpass the present
in f rightfulness ; in fact, the present conflict will be
like child's play compared to what can be expected
in the next war.

The question is, What kind of an army will
Russia be able to put into the next war? In ten
years the population of Russia will be 200,000,000,
Germany's about 100,000,000. In Russia, there-
fore, an army of 40,000,000 men will be available
and in Germany barely 20,000,000.

For any army of 40,000,000 men at least 300,000
officers are required, and to provide for this all
young men should be trained and schooled to be-
come officers. In all schools and colleges military
instruction should be included among the other
studies. In this army of 40,000,000 there will
be 30,000,000 infantry, 2,000,000 cavalry, 5,000,000
artillery, and the remainder in engineer and special
troops. The equipment will consist of 100,000
big guns, 1,000,000 machine guns, and 10,000 auto-
mobile trucks and ammunition wagons.

In this state of affairs, three alternatives present
themselves to the United States.

** Where There Is No Vision" 229

The first is to make no preparation. The second
is to make an inadequate preparation, and the
third is to make adequate preparation.

Its policy throughout its history has consistently
been that of inadequate preparation.

As between the first two alternatives of no pre-
paration whatever or of inadequate preparation,
the former is preferable.

If America prefers in a spirit of blind optimism
to rely upon the fact that it has no aggressive pur-
pose toward any nation, and upon the other fact,
which is not so clear, that no nation will ever have
any aggressive purpose with reference to it, or if
they do, that it will simply "carry in its right
hand gentle peace to silence envious tongues" and
more hostile hands, then the policy of no prepara-
tion has at least something to commend it as com-
pared with the plan of inadequate defence, for at
least it would save many lives. If with its inade-
quate resources it should be suddenly plunged
into war — and all modem wars come with mar-
vellous suddenness — the defence of its soil with
an inferior navy, or an inadequate army, would
in these times, when war is a matter of chemistry,
mechanics, and organization, involve a useless
sacrifice of life and treasure.

To subject its soldiers and sailors, as Spain did

230 The War and Humanity

its inadequate fleet, when it ordered Cervera
and his squadron from the ports of Spain to the
West Indies in order to satisfy national honour,
knowing that these ships would be annihilated by-
guns of longer range, may have some sanction in
national pride, but it is nevertheless a wholly
unnecessary sacrifice, for the ultimate result to
the nation would be the same.

In fact, if the United States made no opposition
at all, but as non-resistants, welcomed the invader
with the open arms of friendship, and trusted to
his magnanimity and generosity, the terms of
peace would probably be less humiliating than if it
sent an unequal army and navy against the over-
powering resources of nations, which have made
their preparations for war a matter of life and death.

The art of war has been revolutionized within
vhe last hundred years. Danton could say at the
beginning of the French Revolution to arouse the
people: "Dare! again dare! and evermore dare!"
The Republican hosts of France arose in that
spirit, and when war was a matter of man to man
and foe saw the face of foe, it was quite pos-
sible, from the mere spirit of " daring " to use
Danton's phrase, to carry it through successfully.
Today war is a matter of mechanics, chemistry,
transportation, and organization. Thus we would

"Where There Is No Vision" 231

have to paraphrase the words of Danton and
say, "Organize, and again organize, and ever-
more organize," because an army that lacks
the mechanics of war is worse than no army
at all.

Mr. William J. Bryan, the most noted of the
extreme pacifists, has deprecated the necessity for
any preparation, and is quoted as suggesting that,
if America were attacked, a million men would
spring to arms between sunrise and sunset. He
adds that the money that the nation would spend
in increasing its army could more profitably build
twelve great roads from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Magnificent idea ! It would be along those very
roads that the invader would march to the very
heart of our country. Said Solomon: "Seest thou
a man who is hasty in his words? There is more
hope in a fool than in him. "

A nation cannot improvise an army after a de-
claration of war, any more than, if an epidemic
were raging, it could improvise a medical staff, or,
if a great conflagration should visit a city, im-
provise a fire department.

If there is one thing that the last eighteen
months have demonstrated, it is the unquenchable
valour and magnificent endurance of France. The
French people, in 1870, were as brave as they

232 The War and Humanity

are today, but they were not prepared. Their
system of mobilization was so imperfect that in
some instances its soldiers travelled several hun-
dred miles in one direction to receive their
equipment and then returned to join their regi-
ments twenty miles from where they started.
At the outbreak of the war, when the Minis-
ter of War was asked by Napoleon the Third
whether everything was ready, the former re-
plied that if the war lasted a whole year, the
French Army would not need so much as a gaiter
button.

Three weeks after the declaration of war, out
of three hundred and thirty thousand soldiers
on paper, only two hundred thousand actually
mobiHzed. The reserves had had only one
month's training and, in consequence, did not
know the use of the new type of rifle that
had been introduced. Many brigades and di-
visions did not know where their commanders
were and many commanders did not know where
their divisions were. Supplies were wholly lack-
ing. "We need everything," said General Failly.
"We are in want of everything," echoed Ba-
zaine. Thirty-eight bakers were sent to feed one
hundred and thirty thousand men. Maps of
Germany were in abundance, but not a single map

"Where There Is No Vision" ,233

of France. The General Staff did not even have
a plan. Bazaine afterwards said that if there
was a plan, he had not learned of it when he
surrendered.

The result was the most terrible debdcle in his-
tory. Paris fell, notwithstanding the valour of its
people and not until they had literally fed upon the
dogs in the streets, but nothing could stand against
the equal valour and superbly developed organi-
zation of a people, who knew so exactly what
they were to do that the story is familiar of the
elder von Moltke, who, after the war had been
declared, simply pointed to a pigeonhole, contain-
ing a plan of campaign prepared years before,
and then resumed his game of solitaire. This
is probably an exaggeration, but the underly-
ing idea is symptomatic. Had there been a
similar unpreparedness in France in 1 9 14 the
result would have been the same, without respect
to the justice of its cause.

The author reached Paris on the night of
July 31st, 191 4, and the next night mobiliza-
tion was declared. The declaration of war was
followed in France as in Germany, by a magni-
ficent demonstration of the power of an efficient
people.

As a result, within the fourteen days which Ger-

234 The War and Humanity

many and France allowed for purposes of mobiliza-
tion, Germany had in all probability over two
millions of trained and equipped soldiers in the
field, nearly a million of whom were poured
through Belgium, while France had probably a
million and a half equally efficient soldiers in
arms. If America, with its 35,000 mobile sol-
diers and its national guard of 120,000 on paper,
with its coast defences lacking powder for even
a day's firing, were confronted with the trained
and equipped soldiers of either France or Ger-
many, it might again suffer the terrible humili-
ation that its Capital suffered over one hundred
years ago when the trained veterans of Welling-
ton marched from the Chesapeake to the Capital
in a few days and burned its public buildings to
ashes with a loss of only forty lives.

The dreadful prolongation of the present war,
with its unprecedented toll of human life, is the
tragedy of military unpreparedness, for France,
England, and Russia were not fully prepared as
compared with Germany to meet the strenuous
necessities of this titanic conflict, and even
Germany greatly miscalculated the tremendous
drain which a prolonged war would make upon
its material resources.

The war has had few greater tragedies than the

"Where There Is No Vision" 235

dreadful disaster which befell the Russian Army,
after its victorious march through Galicia and
across the Carpathians, when it was driven back
and decimated because of its lack of equipment.
Russia's inability to furnish its soldiers with even
a sufficient number of small arms cost it at least a
million soldiers.

England, too, was not ready, and its small but
splendid expeditionary force was quickly swal-
lowed up in the gigantic struggle, for which its
forces, however brave, were painfully inadequate.
Had England been ready, the war might never
have been.

Even France was not fully prepared as to equip-
ment, and it is believed by many military experts
that if General Joffre had had an adequate supply
of munitions, the battle of the Marne would have
been even more decisive and the invaders would
have been driven back to their frontiers.

Possibly half of the tragedies of history are due
to military unpreparedness and in no way has the
solemn warning of Isaiah been more strikingly
illustrated: "Where there is no vision, the people
perish. "

Unless the movement in America for military
preparedness is sustained by the same spirit of
patriotism, unity, and efficient co-operation as was

236 The War and Humanity

shown in the mobilization of France in August,
1914, then any reform in the United States will
be sporadic. Sooner or later men will quarrel
with increased taxation, and the immediate possi-
bility of war not being apparent, the present
movement may unhappily prove to be one of
these temporary agitations, quickly begun and
as quickly abandoned in Congress when it has
served the purpose of self-seeking politicians.

Unless, therefore, the American people can feel
the necessity of adequate defence, and each citizen
feels that it is a matter of civic obligation, as in
Switzerland, to co-operate in some form for the
defence of the nation, then the movement will lack
motive power, and after being a " nine days' won-
der " will be defeated by lack of public interest.

Again to quote Solomon : ' ' He that being often
reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be
destroyed and that without remedy."

Can a great patriotic people, as the American
people are, proud of their glorious past, exultant in
their present condition of unequalled prosperity,
and confident of their future, lack that spirit of
intense civic patriotism, without which no nation
could possibly do that which France, England,
and Germany have done in such a remarkable
way in the year 19 14?

"Where There Is No Vision " 237

The answer cannot be given by reference to a
glorious past or to material prosperity. There
is much more in the "vision" of a people than
in trade statistics or census enumerations. Un-
less the men of America shall have the same
spirit as France to defend their existence as a
nation, then they will be as a people that having
no vision will sooner or later, even if they do not
utterly perish, suffer humiliation such as they
have never yet known.

America's difficulty in having this vision lies
in the fact that it is naturally insular in spirit. It
thinks in the terms of a nation situated between
two great bodies of water; and as the water that
flows about the British Isles has profoundly af-
fected the temper and policy of that people, the ob-
session of these two oceans, stretching to the east
and west, has created in America the consciousness
of being an island remote from possible attack and
surrounded by an impregnable rampart of water.

This sense of insularity is intensified by its
being "cribbed, cabined, and confined" by the
political traditions of the eighteenth century.
The tradition of its supposed isolation is almost
as potent today as it was when Washington was
President. America fails to see that it is the very
heart of the world, wedged between the Occident

238 The War and Humanity

and the Orient, and that the sea, which was once
such an impassable barrier, is now an open, un-
obstructed pathway over which the marvellous
fleets of war could freely pass.

This parochial view blinds many Americans to
the obvious fact that their nation not only will,
but already has, been sucked into the maelstrom
of this titanic conflict. While it may not become
technically involved in the present war before it
ends, yet it is already involved so far as it is a
war of conflicting ideals. From the hatreds, pre-
judices, feeHngs, antipathies, and interests that
are the birth of these labour pains of humanity
America cannot escape.

The author has already discussed the influence
upon America of the perverted application of
Washington's doctrine of neutrality. If he were
alive today and were the President of a nation of
one hundred millions of people, the most power-
ful potentially in the world, would he counsel
such a parochial view and condemn his people to
a policy of perpetual isolation? To reply affirm-
atively is to attribute to the immortal spirit of
Washington a lack of forethought and courage
which his whole career entirely belies.

The superficial character of scholastic education
in America is one cause of this want of vision. In

"Where There Is No Vision" 239

its elementary schools a few basic facts of Ameri-
can history are taught, and they are always facts
that are pleasing to its national pride, and that is
almost all that the average man learns of his coun-
try's history. Take the ten leading colleges of
America, and select the ten brightest students from
the senior class, and then ask these one hundred
boys a very vital incident of American history:
"How did aid first come to America from France ? "
Probably not five per cent, could answer the ques-
tion correctly. And yet if it had not been for that
aid from France the revolution might have ended
in a fiasco. Nine out of ten men would probably
reply that it was Dr. Franklin who first secured
help from France. Long before Dr. Franklin ever
reached Paris the colonists had been given secret
aid from the arsenals of France with the conniv-
ance of its government, then nominally a neutral.
The man who first suggested to his nation the
idea of helping the colonists in this manner was
Beaumarchais, the witty author of The Barber of
Seville and The Marriage of Figaro.

How many Americans, as they sing the Star Span-
gled Banner, recall the humiliating chapter of Ameri-
can history, with which this stirring song of patri-
otism is connected? A few days before had occurred
the rout of the American Army at Bladensburg.

240 The War and Humanity

An American general, who was then in command
and who was made the subject of a court-martial
inquiry, testified that he was able to bring into
the field only about 6000 men, all of whom
were militia except about 400 regulars; that he
could not collect more than half his men until
a day or two before the engagement, and 700
did not arrive until fifteen minutes before the
engagement began, which was a little late; that
the commanding officers were unknown to him,
and only a small number had enjoyed the benefit
of miHtary instruction or experience.

Four days from the landing on Chesapeake Bay
to the capture of the City of Washington was all
that was required by the attacking force. The im-
mediate terrain was a wooded one, and well adapted
for defence. The British commander testified that
the American Army at Bladensburg was "strongly
posted on very commanding heights. "

A few rockets, sent up over the heads of the
untrained militia, plunged them into a panic of
terror and they fled, leaving the artillery uncov-
ered. The only redeeming feature was the 400
trained artillery men, who fought bravely until
they found that the drivers of the ammunition
wagons had a pressing engagement in Washington
and had also incontinently fled.

"Where There Is No Vision" 241

General Winder, the American officer in question,
testified that after a short struggle "not a vestige
remained of the army," and that all except the 400
brave regulars had beaten a hasty retreat.

The victors lost sixty-four killed and 185
wounded, and the vanquished lost ten or twelve
killed and forty wounded. The invaders burnt
the Capitol and the Executive Mansion. The
London Times contained a few weeks later an edi-
torial saying that "Washington, the nest of vipers,
was at last destroyed." That was a few days
before the Star Spangled Banner was written.

Americans can be proud that a small number
of unseasoned militia did save Baltimore on that
occasion, but is it not the part of wisdom to teach
the American youth that while the flag on Fort
McHenry did continue to wave, yet that military
unpreparedness nearly brought the United States
to ruin ?

In the Revolutionary War there were 395,000

enlistments, and yet Washington never had an

army of more than 17,000 men to command, and

that only at the beginning, and at one time only

3,000 men remained to serve. Inspired by their

noble chieftain, they contributed that noblest

chapter of American heroism at Valley Forge, and

redeemed those humiliating features of the Revolu-
i<

242 The War and Humanity

tion which too many Americans complacently
ignore.

In the War of 18 12, there were 527,000 enlisted
men on the American side and the utmost force
that the British ever had was 55,000 and yet until
the great but unnecessary triumph at New Orieans,
the dubious successes of the American Army on
land were largely redeemed by the very brilliant
achievements of its small but efficient navy. May
Americans one day see in their American colleges,
whose success as social clubs cannot be gainsaid,
a standing rule that no man shall receive a degree
unless he has a working knowledge of the Con-
stitution of the United States and can pass a real
examination in the true history of his country!

Again America's optimistic idealism further
tends to obscure that clear vision, which its safety
requires. Among these ideals is that of pacifism.
The author has been in his life a consistent worker
in the cause of international arbitration. He still
believes in it. While it can never altogether end
war, it can minimize its minor causes and when
these occur, it provides the machinery for settling
disputes with honour.

The ideal of the pacification of humanity is a
noble goal, toward which humanity must painfully
toil. In this respect it can be said of civilization

"Where There Is No Vision" 243

that unless it have the true vision of peace, viz.,
peace with justice, it will perish.

Americans are a pacific people, and it is not
surprising, nor a matter of discredit, that shortly
before this war it was enthusiastically negotiating
and signing arbitration treaties, which went to the
length of agreeing to arbitrate even questions of
national honour. But while this spirit of humani-
tarian idealism has its good side, it also has its
unfortunate results.

This beautiful vision of the pacification of
humanity has to some extent blinded us to the
fact that we are still living in a real world of very
fallible men, in which all do not want justice and in
which some nations plainly prefer injustice. Un-
less a nation is prepared to acquiesce in wanton
wrong, it must be prepared to defend itself.

No human being can tell what mysterious birth
will come from the awful travail of this titanic
world-war. We do know, however, — and this fact
is one never to be forgotten — that whereas before
the beginning of this war the United States en-
joyed in generous measure the good will of the
greater part, if not all, the world, it is at least
doubtful whether it has now the good will of any
tonight, at least to the same extent as in past
years. Its relations with the rest of the world have

244 The War and Humanity

experienced in the last two years the most extraor-
dinary and portentous bouleversement. The nerves
of the world, after this conflict is over, will be the
nerves of a neurasthenic and very dangerous to
irritate.

It is always within the power of any foreign
nation to involve the United States in war. If
other pretexts were lacking, America has given a
standing challenge to all the world. It is the
Monroe Doctrine.

Thereby it claims a moral protectorate over the
entire Western Hemisphere. Such claim obviously
has no sanction in international law and is only an
assertion of what is supposed to be enlightened
policy. If any nation wishes to quarrel with the
United States it need only, for instance, purchase
one of the West Indies. What would America
then say? What could she safely say in her
condition of comparative weakness?

If the United States desires to take part in the
League of Peace, to which I have already referred,
must it not have an army and navy to contrib-
ute to the enforcement of this joint responsi-
bility of civilization? Can the United States
enter the councils of the nations with nothing but
an apology for an army? If it desires, as it
should, to take the lead in such a league of nations,

"Where There Is No Vision" 245

it should be prepared to make good its part of the
joint promise.

Is the America of today capable of playing
such a part ? Patriotic self-complacency prompts
an unhesitating reply in the affirmative, but the
events of the last two years should givethe can-
did American pause forthought.

Several years ago the author Vas in Rome and
one evening, as the sun was setting, leaned over the
parapet of the Pincian hill and saw the "Eternal
City" in the glory of a dying day. The band
was playing the Valhalla motif from the Gotter-
dammerung of Wagner. Before me was the his-
toric city, an epitome of the progress of mankind.
There was the Coliseum, that remnant of imperial
Rome, standing like a gigantic torso of Michel An-
gelo. Then I turned to the west and saw the dome
of St. Peter's, over which another great authority
of today still rules so large a part of mankind. I
thought of Republican Rome, and of the Rome of
the Caesars and the Renaissance, the Rome of the
Popes and of modem Italy, and with the majestic
strains of the Valhalla motif sounding in my ears
I wondered whether this were the "twilight of the
gods" for this imperial city.

Some months later, I read in Trevelyan's
History of the Roman Republic these last words

246 The War and Humanity

of his introduction. He had just traced the pro-
gress of the great uprising throughout Italy, and
eloquently concluded:

This has taught, what clearly cannot be learned
from the pages of Ruskin and Symonds or any other
of Italy's melodious mourners, that she is not dead
but risen, that she contains not only ruins but men,
that she is not the home of ghosts, but the land
which the living share with their immortal ancestors.

America has a glorious past, and an equally
glorious future likewise awaits it, if it be only
worthy of it. If its people shall have a "vision"
of its potential greatness, if the old American spirit,
that in times of stress and toil has never hitherto
failed it at the end, shall be felt again, then it will
be said of America in these dim, uncertain, and
portentous days to come, that "she is not dead
but risen, that she contains not only ruins but
men, that she is not the home of ghosts, but the
land which the living share with their immortal
ancestors."

VI
AMERICA AND THE ALLIES

" It is a great error and a narrowness of the mind to think
that nations have nothing to do one with another except there
be either an union in sovereignty or a conjunction in pacts
or leagues; there are other bands of society and implicit
confederations."

— Lord Bacon.

247

VI

AMERICA AND THE ALLIES

[The author, at the invitation of the Pilgrims'
Society of London, went to England in the summer
of 1 91 6, and, on July 5th, addressed at a luncheon,
given to him in London, a distinguished gather-
ing of English public men of all classes. Viscount
Bryce presided, and his speech, in proposing the
author's health, conveyed to the American people
a very significant message as to the attitude of
England. This speech is printed in the Appendix.

The author's reply was intended to be an explan-
ation of the attitude of the American people, as
distinguished from their "government of the day."]

My Lords and Gentlemen :

Let me in the first place say to Viscount Bryce
that I shall carry back the message, with which he
has done me the honour to entrust me, and it will
receive a very ready response among the thought-
ful people of my country, for I am persuaded that
the best thought of America is that it would be a
world-wide calamity if this war did not end with
a conclusive victory for the principles so nobly
defended by the Allies. I will also carry back

249

250 The War and Humanity

the possibly unnecessary message that this war is
not going to be a draw. I was in this country in
the first month of the war, and England then
reminded me of a great St. Bernard dog, which in
a spirit of noblesse oblige complacently wagged its
tail when attacked by a powerful adversary.
Today England seems to me like a bull-dog with
the business end of his jaws firmly set in his
assailant's throat.

Let me further say, by way of introduction,
that I also accept with great hesitation the
magnificent compliment which the author of The
American Commonwealth has been pleased to pay
me. I know full well that in the generous apprecia-
tion, which you have shown me, and which he has
confirmed by his gracious reference to the little I
have done, your friendly attitude exaggerates any
service that I was privileged to render to your
cause, and yet I shall not blunt the fine edge of the
compliment by too vigorous a disclaimer. Lord
Bryce's name in my country carries immense
weight, possibly more so than any other publicist
of any nation. When he speaks, whether in
printed page or oral speech, we are accustomed to
accept it as almost ex cathedra, and I therefore
feel in view of what he has said about my contribu-
tion to the controversial history of the war, very

America and the Allies 251

much as Dr. Johnson did when he visited King
George III. and His Majesty was pleased to make
some very compHmentary remarks about the
Fleet Street philosopher's dictionary. When Dr.
Johnson returned to the ever faithful Boswell,
and told him with natural gratification what His
Majesty had said, Boswell said: "What did you
say when the King praised your dictionary?" Dr.
Johnson replied: "Am I a man to bandy words
with my Sovereign? If His Majesty says that
my dictionary is the best in the English language,
it must be so." Similarly I shall accept, not
without great misgivings, Lord Bryce's gracious
introduction and the generous references which
he has made to The Evidence in the Case.

I have crossed the ocean to bring to you a mes-
sage of good will from the American Pilgrims, and
because you are all busy men I wish to speak as
briefly and rapidly as possible. I have not any
prepared speech. This is not the time for didactic
essays or ornate orations. In these dreadful days
— to use the fine phrase of Tom Paine, ' ' the times
that try men's souls " — the only thing that is valu-
able in speech is sincerity, and it is in that spirit I
wish to speak to you about the one topic of which
you may wish to hear me : namely, the relations of
the United States to this war and to the Allies.

252 The War and Humanity

There is one obvious limitation upon any dis-
cussion of the subject at my hands. Whatever
may be my views at home, I cannot discuss the
poHtical policies of the party of the day in the
United States. I have very strong convictions
with respect to many of these policies, and I have
not hesitated to express them with great freedom
to audiences of my own countrymen, but if I shall
ever be tempted to criticise in a public gathering
in a foreign land either the President of the United
States or the Government of the day, may my
tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth !

Be the acts of a political Government what they
may, the vital importance for the great future is
what has been the spirit of the people, because
in the long run that is more significant than the
temporary policy of any party of the day. I have
gratifying news to bring to this distinguished audi-
ence as to the attitude of the American people.

I was in England, as I have said, in the first
month of the war. I remember with what in-
terest, perhaps I might almost say solicitude,
thoughtful Englishmen asked, when the war came
as a bolt out of the blue, what will be the verdict of
America ? It was not merely the sentimental side
of that verdict which interested you, although
I think some of you attached great importance to

America and the Allies 253

what your kinsmen across the Atlantic would say
as to the ethical aspects of the great controversy.
But there were obvious practical aspects with
respect to your great Empire which made the
question of some importance. It was important
to know how America would view a great world
crisis, as to which all its past political traditions
gave it no preliminary prepossessions.

The verdict that came to you across the Atlantic
was spontaneous and overwhelming. We have in
our history viewed with varied feelings and a lack of
clearly preponderating views the previous wars of
Europe in the nineteenth century, as we con-
sidered them in their ethical and practical aspects.
But in this case the overwhelming sentiment of the
people, whether expressed by press or pulpit,
by university or college, by bankers, merchants,
or the masses toiling in the factories and the
fields, was overwhelmingly in favour of the Allies.
Excluding one or two elements of our population,
which by reason of ties of blood to some extent
ran counter to that general opinion, the pre-
ponderating judgment of the American people
was then and after eighteen months remains today,
without diminution or shadow of turning, heart
and soul with the Allies.

While that verdict needs no further statement,

254 The War and Humanity

for it is a commonplace of our current political
history, yet it has certain features which may not
have received full recognition in this country.

In the first place, it was a dispassionate verdict.
I mean by that it was little affected by racial kin-
ship. I believe that the American people, if they
had ^thought that England was in the wrong in
unsheathing its sword on behalf of Belgium, or in
entering upon this great world quarrel, would have
reached that conclusion but little influenced by
racial kinship or the ties of blood. The verdict
was as clearly dispassionate as one could expect
in a verdict of human beings.

In the second place it was not an academic
verdict, reached after coffee at the breakfast table
and forgotten before the shadows of evening fell.
It was a verdict rendered after one of the greatest
intellectual controversies that my country ever
knew. For eighteen months its people day and
night discussed this question; it was a common-
place of conversation to say that whenever a group
of intelligent men and women were gathered to-
gether all subjects inevitably led to the war.
IMoreover, Germany, appreciating the value of the
American verdict, did not hesitate to appoint its
advocatus diaholi in the person of Dr. Dernberg,
and he and other professional propagandists, open

America and the Allies 255

or secret, financed by millions, and aided by thou-
sands of German volunteers, attempted at every
crossroad and in the centres of our cities, to reverse
that verdict by a very torrent of controversial
argument and by appeals to every idea or interest
which they thought might impress the American.
They appealed to our supposed cupidity, our fears,
our prejudices, our interests, to every consideration
which might affect the spontaneous verdict that
was first pronounced. Yet they were finally
obliged to admit that this judgment of the Ameri-
can people was a settled, matured, deliberate, and
irrevocable judgment, in no respects academic
but such a judgment as a court of law would
pronounce upon a consideration of all the facts.

Again, this verdict was a militant verdict. I
mean that the American people did not in a spirit
of moral dilettantism merely express an opinion
about this war, and then resume their normal
activities. To an extent far greater than perhaps
some of you appreciate, American men, women,
and children have been for eighteen months work-
ing in their several capacities, either to alleviate
the sufferings of the war or to stem the German
propaganda, by building up a strong militant
public opinion for the Allies. So that if the war
is a war primarily of ideas and ideals, we have

2^6 The War and Humanity

been participants to some extent, and our part has
not been only that of a cold, callous, selfish out-
sider, as some have thought.

Finally, this verdict was in a sense a disinterested
verdict, by which I mean that it was little affected
by our own interests. We did not ask whether it
was to our advantage that this or that group of
nations should triumph. Indeed, our sense of
detachment made it seem to us that neither the
fate of Belgium nor Servia nor even the " balance
of power" in Europe affected us directly, and it
was therefore the ethical aspects of the issue which
powerfully appealed to our emotions and made us
enthusiastic adherents of the Allies' cause.

You will, however, ask, that if the verdict were
thus overwhelming, why did it not find a greater
reflex in the action of the American Government
as a political entity?

I have said that I cannot discuss the political
policies of the party of the day of my country.
While I am not of that party, still it speaks for my
nation, and while I reserve the right to criticise it
in my own country, yet with every true American,
politics stops at the margin of the ocean, and there-
fore I cannot criticise the present Administration at
Washington in a foreign land. But I can give you
the reason why in the very nature of things the

America and the Allies 257

United States as a political entity could not be
expected to take any other part than that of
neutrality in this world crisis.

England and the United States are the two most
conservative democracies of the world. Each
loves settled institutions. Each clings to the old
and dreads the new. They believe that that
which has in the past been tried has a violent
presumption in its favour.

Never was a nation more dominated by a tradi-
tion than the United States by the tradition of its
political isolation. It has its roots in the very
beginnings of the American Commonwealth. In
nine generations no political party and few pubHc
men have ever questioned its continued efficacy.
The pioneers, who came in 1620 across the Atlantic
to Plymouth Rock, and founded the American
Commonwealth, desired, like the intrepid Kent
in King Lear, to "shape their old course in a
country new," so that the spirit of detachment
from Europe was implanted in the very souls of
the pioneers who conquered the virgin forests of
America. Its history in the colonial period was
marked by a constant struggle between this
spirit of detachment and the centralizing de-
mands of the Mother Country. The Revolution

was not merely caused by a penny stamp on tea.
17

258 The War and Humanity

America proclaimed its independence from this
powerful instinct of separation and detachment.
When Washington in the Napoleonic wars pro-
claimed a policy of neutrality, he again expressed
the instinctive feeling of his countr^^men that
America should not be the shuttlecock of European
politics. It had had long and too bitter experi-
ence of this. As Macaulay said, the rape of
Silesia had made the whites and Indians fight upon
the shores of the Hudson and the Great Lakes.

When Washington gave in his great Farewell Ad-
dress his last testament to his countrymen, he de-
fined the foreign policy of the United States better
than it has been defined before or since. He said
that Europe has a "set of primary interests which to
us have none or a very remote relation, " and there-
fore he advised that we should not by ''artificial ties
implicate ourselves in the ordiiiary vicissitudes of
her politics or the ordinary combinations and col-
lisions of her friendships and enmities."

My countrymen for many generations have
accepted this counsel of our Founder as infallible,
but they have not always appreciated the weight
that Washington meant to give to the expression
"artificial ties," and "ordinary vicissitudes and
ordinary enmities." Washington recognized that
there might, as is now the case, be an extra-

America and the Allies 259

ordinary vicissitude, in which a conflict, while
originating primarily on the Continent of Europe,
and primarily affecting its internal politics, might
also affect the very bases of civilization, and
impose upon the United States, as upon every
civilized nation, the fullest responsibility to aid in
maintaining the peace of the world by establishing
international justice. By "artificial ties" Wash-
ington meant, I think, hard and fast alliances of
an entangling nature. He did not intend to ignore
the natural ties, which spring from racial kinship
or common ideals.

The Monroe Doctrine illustrates the same
policy of isolation, for it was founded upon a dis-
claimer of any interest by the United States "in
the internal affairs of Europe."

I appeal to you, men of England — and many of
you here present stand high in the public life of this
country of settled traditions — if a tradition had ex-
isted in England for three centuries, and had per-
sisted among nine generations of men who, although
they differed upon every other question, yet never
differed with respect to such policy, could you
reasonably expect that in a day or a week or a year
that England, even in a great crisis of humanity,
would throw aside a great settled tradition, the
value and justice of which all its political parties

26o The War and Humanity

had accepted for three centuries? If such a
policy had had in successive generations the
unquestioning support of the elder and the younger
Pitt, of Fox, Camden, Burke, Sheridan, of
Peel, Palmerston, and Russell, of Gladstone, Dis-
raeli, and Salisbury, of Balfour, Bonar Law, As-
quith, and Sir Edward Grey, and then a quarrel
arose in another country three thousand miles away,
would England in a day or a month or a year
have disregarded a tradition of such exceptional
authority? Mutatis mutandis, and that was the
position of the United States on August i, 1914.

Were this all, the attitude of the United States
as a political entity would be easily understood.
But we have another tradition, which in this
crisis has conflicted with our tradition of isolation.

In every true American soul in the last two
years there has been an irrepressible conflict
of ideals. One was this ideal of detachment
from European politics; the other was the ideal
which we derived from the French Revolution,
namely, the spirit of cosmopolitanism, which
taught us that humanity was greater than any
nation; that the interests of civilization were
above those of any country; that above all there
was a conscience of mankind, by which the actions
of any nation must be judged.

America and the Allies 261

When, therefore, the rape of Belgium affronted
our conscience, the question inevitably arose,
"shall we abandon the great tradition of political
isolation, under which we have grown great, or
shall we fail by inaction to do a duty, where the
spirit of international justice imperiously calls
upon us and every nation to play its part?"

The practical genius of our people tried to solve
the problem as best it could in so short a time, and
our government was permitted by public opinion
to follow an official policy of neutrality, which I
think it is no exaggeration to call one of benevolent
neutrality to the Allies, while the people of the
United States, as individuals and collectively,
proceeded to ignore the policy of moral neu-
trality by helping the Allies in every practicable
way in their noble struggle for the best interests
of civilization.

I believe that this war, among its many other
compensating benefits, will bring nearer to realiza-
tion than ever before a sympathetic understanding
between Great Britain and the United States.
We appreciate the greatness of your Empire more
than we, I think, appreciated it before. Our views
in the past have been somewhat affected by our
earlier history, and to a greater extent than you
may imagine by the Napoleonic wars, because

262 The War and Humanity

every American boy, at least in the exuberance of
youthful imagination, ranks the great Napoleon
as his hero next to Washington. This has always
afiected the attitude with which the American
in the past has viewed the policies of your Empire.
But now we have seen your Empire rise, in
this great crisis of civilization, to defend the
rights of a little nation, and reveal itself — to
use Milton's splendid imagery — as "a noble
and puissant nation, rousing itself like a strong
man after sleep and shaking her invincible
locks."

With deep admiration we have seen Great
Britain follow the noblest policy in all its long
and glorious history in staking its whole existence
to save Belgium and aid France. The immortal
valour of "Tommy Atkins" has also powerfully
impressed us. We saw you, within three days,
send that little army — little in this war — of over
one hundred thousand men across the Channel,
and offer them as a sacrifice to save your great and
heroic neighbour on the south of the English
Channel. We saw the thin red line at Ypres,
suffocated by gases, rained upon by shrapnel,
opposed by forces fourfold greater than their
own, and yet standing like a stone wall against the
red tide of Prussian invasion. We saw Tommy

America and the Allies 263

Atkins realizing that song that I heard in London
twenty years ago :

"To keep the flag a'flying,

He's a'doing and a'dying

Every inch of him a soldier, and a man. "

That has been one great benefit of the war to us,
that it has brought us into a deeper understand-
ing and more sympathetic appreciation of your
great Empire. If I were asked to say who was
unwittingly the most beneficent statesman of
modern times, I should undoubtedly say the
Kaiser, for he has consolidated the British Empire,
reinvigorated France, reorganized Russia, and has
brought the United States and Great Britain
nearer to a realization of that complete sym-
pathetic understanding, upon which an Entente
Cordiale may ultimately rest, than any other
individual in the world.

An Entente Cordiale must rest not merely upon a
sympathetic understanding, but, as long as men
are human, to some extent upon common interests.

We are entering upon the most portentous half-
century the world has ever seen. You will end
this war, and you may end it speedily or within
six months, or a year, or two years. But what lies
beyond? Over ravaged homes, desolated fields.

264 The War and Humanity

and new-made graves, men will gaze at each other
for possibly fifty years with irreconcilable hatred.
This world will be a seething cauldron of interna-
tional hatred, in my judgment, for half a century.

In this portentous and critical time to come, the
United States will need you, and England will
need the United States.

May this possible inter-dependence in vital
interests lead us to a practical recognition that
these two great divisions form a spiritual Empire
of the English-speaking race, not made by con-
stitutions, written documents, or formal alliances,
but constituting, as Proudhon said in 1845, of
Society in general a "living being, endowed with
an intelligence and activity of its own, and as
such, a [spiritual] organic unit." This great Em-
pire of the English-speaking race must stand united
in spirit, though not organically, for unless it
stands together, there is little hope that in these
dreadful years to come there will be the main-
tenance of any permanent peace in the only way
that peace can be maintained, namely, through
the vindication of justice.

I have taken far too long, but I may add that in
order to develop this sympathetic understanding
we must fully appreciate the difficulties of each
nation and "bear and forbear."

America and the Allies 265

For example, we have learned to appreciate that
which your Empire has done. But if you will
pardon me, I do not think you adequately appre-
ciate the great difficulties of the United States in
this crisis, which would have been great if we had
only to contend with our heterogeneous popula-
tion. Has it ever yet occurred to you that we have
in the United States of teutonic origin, counting
birth or immediate parentage, a population equal
to one third of all the men, women, and children
of Great Britain. Then we have, as I have ex-
plained, the great difficulty of a persistent tradi-
tion, which in all generations has powerfully
influenced the American mind and has been
hitherto vindicated by its results. Can you not
see that you must not misinterpret a nation, which
cannot in a day abandon a cherished tradition,
even if it be conceded that the interests of civiliza-
tion required it ?

' Then there is a disposition on this side to mis-
interpret what we have tried to do as a people to
help you. Some of the very things for which we
have been most criticised are those that seem to me
to redound to our credit.

Take, for example, the sale of munitions. It is be-
lieved by many here that we have in a sordid and
mercenary way deliberately profited by this world

266 The War and Humanity

tragedy; that, while civilization was nailed to the
Cross, America, as the Roman soldiers, contented
itself with dividing the raiment of the crucified.

Only an infinitesimal portion of the American
people directly profited by this traffic. Indirectly
it is true we have all profited by the immense
prosperity thereby stimulated, but have you
thought of the other side of the ledger? We have
abandoned not only an unbroken friendship with
the first military power of the world to give you
munitions; but we have incurred an obligation that
will weigh heavily upon us in future years far
beyond any possible economic profits that our
industries may temporarily gain by furnishing
the Allies with munitions. To have placed an
embargo on munitions to safeguard our internal
peace and outward safety would not have violated
neutrality in a legal sense. Sweden and Holland
have forbidden many exports to protect their
vital interests. We refused to do so as to war
munitions, because the American people believed
that in the earlier stages of the war you needed
and deserved our aid and were determined that
at any cost you should have it.

We fully realized that in doing so we exposed
ourselves to a great and continuing peril. Why
did 140,000 men recently parade the streets of

America and the Allies 267

New York from early dawn to night? Why did
100,000 men march in Chicago? Why 60,000
in Boston? Was it Mexico? We no more fear
a possible war with Mexico than a St. Bernard
dog cares for a black-and-tan terrier.

What was the meaning of this outpouring of all
classes? We knew that we had incurred the
undying enmity of Germany by doing you a ser-
vice. We know if she wins this war or even makes
it a draw, that as sure as political events can ever
be prognosticated, Germany will one day settle
her account with the United States, for there is no
country in the world next to the British Empire
that Germany today hates as she does the United
States. To avoid this very danger, which will
burden us for generations to come, shifty politi-
cians attempted to put an embargo on the export
of munitions, but public opinion said "No," and
our President called Congress together and made
them stand up and be counted, and thereafter
no further threatened interruption stopped the
flow of munitions to the Allies. As a result we
are now doubling our Army and largely increasing
our Navy, and future generations will bear the
burden.

Do you realize that not only have we contributed
by the sacrificing labours of men, women, and child-

268 The War and Humanity

ren at least £10,000,000 to relieve the frightful suf-
fering in this war, but that over sixteen thousand
American boys are fighting under the Maple Leaf
for the Union Jack; and ten thousand more are
serving under the tricolour of France? The
youth from our colleges and universities are serv-
ing with the ambulances, and doing the arduous
and often dangerous work of taking the wounded
from the trenches. If the bones of your sons are
now buried in France there also are the bones of
many brave American boys, who, without the
protection of their flag, and with only the im-
pulse of race patriotism, and an ardent spirit of
chivalrous idealism, have gone and given their
young lives as a willing sacrifice.

Therefore, I say to you, men of England, if
there are pinpricks, do not misjudge the American
people, who have done what they did under the
most trying and delicate circumstances, and
whose loyalty to the spiritual Empire of the
English-speaking race has been demonstrated
in this crisis of history.

I am reminded of a scene I once saw in
Lauterbrunnen, that most beautiful valley in
all the world. There are the three crowning
peaks of the Bernese Oberland, the Eiger, the
Monch, and the Jungfrau. They are apparently

America and the Allies 269

separate, and yet are eternally rested upon the
common granite foundation of one undivided range
of the eternal Alps. I like to think that the three
great democracies of civilization, Great Britain,
France, and the United States, while separate
peaks in a purely political sense, yet also stand
upon a common foundation of democracy and
liberty.

When I was in this Valley of Lauterbrunnen a
Swiss guide sounded an echo of an Alpine horn.
He played the four notes of the common chord, and
as they reverberated back across the valley from
the sombre bases of the higher Bernese Alps they
were merged into the most gracious and beautiful
harmonies that the mind of man could conceive.
It sounded in that vast Cathedral of Nature as a
divinely majestic organ.' May not these four notes,
thus mingled, typify the common traditions of
these three great democracies and create a lasting
harmony, which will contribute to the symphony
of universal progress?

The Swiss guide also asked me to hear the echo
of a little brass cannon, and as he fired it the
effect was bewildering. It seemed to me as if
the very mountains had toppled from their bases.
The smoke of the cannon drifted across my eyes,
and for a moment obliterated the majestic range

270 The War and Humanity

of the Bernese Alps. Finally the smoke cleared
away, and the Eiger, the Monch, and the Jungfrau
were again revealed in their undiminished beauty.
May not that little cannon well typify Prussian
militarism?

When the smoke of this Titanic conflict passes
from our eyes and the echoes of this portentous
war shall die away into the terrible past, we shall
— please God — see outlined against the infinite
blue of His future these great democracies of
civilization — Great Britain, France, and the
United States.

No organic connection between them is neces-
sary to exert their collective and most potent
influence upon the world, for it was well said
by one of the profoundest thinkers of all time,
Francis Bacon, that

it is a great error and a narrowness of the mind
that nations have nothing to do one with another
except there be either an union in sovereignty
or a conjunction in pacts or leagues; there are
other bands of society and implicit confederations.^*

VII
THE VISION OF FRANCE

France, whose armour conscience buckled on
Whom zeal and charily brought to the field
As God's own soldier."

— Shakespeare.

271

VII
THE VISION OF FRANCE

[Mr. James M. Beck, formerly Assistant Attorney-
General of the United States and the author of
The Evidence in the Case, has just returned from
England and France, where he was entertained by
many soldiers and statesmen in both countries and
where he was able to witness for nearly a week the
battle front from Verdun to Rheims. On his
return he responded to the toast "France" at a
banquet given by the France-America Society on
the birthday of Lafayette on September 6, 191 6, in
honour of M. Jusserand, the French Ambassador.
As his speech is of general interest. The Times
reprints it in order that a wider audience than those
who attended the dinner may read Mr. Beck's
testimony to the spirit of France.— New York
Times.]

It is a great privilege to join in this tribute of
respect to the Ambassador of France. It has
been his high privilege to represent his noble
and heroic nation in the capital of the great-
est of the neutral nations during one of the
stormiest crises of human history. It is little
II 273

274 The War and Humanity

to say that he has done so in a manner that has
not only worthily represented France, but has
never at any time abused the hospitality of the
people to whom he is accredited.

We would welcome the French Ambassador,
even if his personal merits were less than they are,
because he is the representative of that country,
which of all foreign nations is the first in the
affections of the American people. Our country
has always been and is today under an immeasur-
able debt to France. This obligation is a common-
place of our history, and I refer to it only to make
one suggestion. A possible disadvantage of this
enthusiastic celebration of Lafayette's birthday, if
it have any, lies in this, that the glamour of his
youth and the romantic splendour of his career
serve to obscure the great debt which America
owes to other illustrious Frenchmen of that epic
period, many of whom, as Rochambeau and
De Grasse, are familiar to Americans by name, but
some of whom, like the great Foreign Minister of
France, Vergennes, or like Beaumarchais, who
helped to send the first indispensable aid of arms
and munitions to our armies, are little known.
Above all, our admiration for Lafayette should
not obscure the services of those great philosophic
thinkers of France of the eighteenth century —

The Vision of France 275

Montesquieu, Diderot, Voltaire, and Rousseau,
and many others, whose hatred of oppression
found so great a reflex in our Declaration of
Independence.

In now returning to my native land after an
absence of two months in England and France, I
take this first occasion to express my most grateful
appreciation of the overwhelming courtesy with
which I was received in both countries. I do not
regard this generous welcome as merely a recog-
nition of the little I was privileged to do for their
cause, but simply as a method that England and
France chose to recognize that very large group of
Americans, of whom I was but one, who disdained
in the greatest moral crisis of civilization to be
intellectually or morally neutral.

You have asked me to respond to the toast of
"France." What a noble and inspiring theme,
and how utterly beyond any power, either of the
spoken word or the printed page, to do full justice!
To any one who has been privileged, as I was, to
have the spiritual revelation of seeing that great
country transfigured in its noble fight for the basic
principles of civilization, any words of praise
seem pitifully inadequate.

When I am at a loss for any words to voice a
sentiment, I always recur to the most universal

276 The War and Humanity

genius that the world has yet produced, our own
English Shakespeare, of whom I like to think —
although it is little more than conjecture — that
while his father was English, as his name implies,
and belonged to that sturdy yeomanry "whose
limbs were made in England, " yet that his mother,
with the beautiful name of Mary Arden, may have
had some French-Norman blood in her veins,
which contributed something to that clarity of
expression and exquisite refinement of thought
which so pre-eminently characterize the greatest
of all poets.

I looked into my Shakespeare to find what the
great poet had said of a soldier of France, and in
King John I found these lines, which I think make
the best response to the toast which the committee
has done me the great honour to assign me. He
says:

France, whose armour conscience buckled on,
Whom zeal and charity brought to the field
As God's own soldier !

What nobler tribute could an English poet pay
to the immemorial enemy of England than to call
a champion of France " God ' s own soldier " ? And
I, who have seen these soldiers in the trenches
on the far-flung battle line from Verdun to Rheims,

The Vision of France 2']^

can testify that, from the humblest poilu up to
the great Commander-in-Chief, whom it was my
exalted privilege to meet at headquarters, they are
truly, in their willingness to lay down their lives for
France and its cause, "God's own soldiers."
They solved a problem for me. I once wondered
whether it was Napoleon who made the Grand
Army, or the Grand Army, Napoleon. Now I
know that the great conqueror was the product
of the soldiers of France.

The decision of France to align itself with Russia
in defence of Serbia was to my mind one of the
most heroic decisions that any nation ever reached.
France knew she would have to bear the immedi-
ate brunt of the attack. She knew she had only
600,000 immediately effective soldiers to face
over 800,000 of the best-equipped soldiers in the
world. She knew that not merely did this dis-
parity exist in numbers, but a graver disparity
existed in time. For political reasons France could
not mobilize before August i, 1914, while Germany
had been quietly mobilizing at least seven days
before, as is shown by the letter of the Kaiser
to King George, in which he stated that on August
1st he was stopping his troops "by telephone
and telegraph from crossing into France." It
is thus clear that while Germany was largely,

278 The War and Humanity

if not completely, mobilized and ready for the
advance on August ist, France was then only be-
ginning to call its reserves to the colors. This
advantage in time of mobilization was a serious,
an almost fatal handicap. Yet fully conscious
of it, France, without counting the cost, without
vacillating or hesitating for a moment, with no
direct interest whatever in Serbia, knowing that
the burden of the attack would fall upon her and
that her very existence depended upon the imme-
diate outcome; that the nation about to attack
her was the first military power of the world
and almost twice as great in population, and
even greater in the equipment of arms, never
hesitated, but immediately, when the first cloud
arose upon the horizon, took its side with Russia
in defending the right of little Servia to live as an
independent nation. Thus France and Russia
stood from the very beginning of the crisis of
1 914 for the great principle of reason and justice
in international controversies.

If that attitude were heroic, what must be said of
the decision of that great commander who, on the
28th of August, took upon his broad shoulders
the exclusive and supreme risk of retreating to the
line of the Mame, knowing that if he failed and
his army lost its morale in the retreat, his place

The Vision of France 279

in history and his fate might be more ignominious
than that of Bazaine. With the Fabian tactics
of Washington and with the same superb moral
courage, he slowly retreated, and when he finally
turned and faced his powerful opponent upon the
Mame, his forces did not exceed, even with his
reserves, 1,000,000 men, while opposed to him
were at least 1,500,000 men, flushed with victory.
In a battle, one of the most glorious in all the
history of the world, possibly greater in its future
consequences than that in which Charles Martel
hurled back the Saracens at Tours — France's
army, under General Joffre, scored one of the
greatest triumphs in history and saved the basic
principles of civilization from destruction.

Alas, they paid the cost ! I visited a part of the
battlefield of the Marne, and only too frequently I
would see, in the beautiful golden harvest-fields
of France, a little cemetery, and when I read the
names over each grave I would often find this
tender, beautiful sentiment, that shows the moral
grandeur and beauty of France: "Z7» enfant de
France, mort pour la Patrie." ("A child of
France, died for his Country.")

I realized then what Miss Aldrich meant in that
charming little book, A Hill-top on the Marne,
when she asked a young French wife, whose

28o The War and Humanity

husband had just left to join the colours: "Do
you not grieve at losing your husband?" and the
young wife bravely replies: "Why, I am but his
wife; France is his mother." To Frenchmen the
motherhood of France is not a mere verbal affecta-
tion or a rhapsody of words. It is a very real
fact. When a French soldier dies on the field of
battle, it is to those who mourn for him, as though
a mother had gathered him forever to her maternal
bosom.

It is that spirit of childhood — was it not once
said "except ye be as little children" — and the
fact that every soldier is a child of his country,
that has given France that exaltation of patriot-
ism, as fine as any that the history of the world
has ever recorded, which, even more than the
generalship of Joffre, Foch, Manoury, and Gallieni,
won the great victory in September, 191 4. A
million men were thus inspired to achieve the
miracle of the Mame by decisively defeating the
greatest and best-equipped army then existing
in the world.

In this connection let me say, in passing, that
there is a disposition, not in England and in
France, but in this country, to minimize the part
that Sir John French's army played on the Mame.
I am confident you would never hear a French

The Vision of France 281

General make any such suggestion of depreciation.
England gave her whole army to save France, gave
it so quickly that in a few days the soldiers that I
saw marching by night through the streets of Win-
chester, and who had seen the sun set upon the hills
of Hampshire, saw it rise on the hills of Normandy.
Relatively small in numbers, it was superb in
equipment and great in spirit. That army, fight-
ing a brave rear-guard action, helped Joffre to bring
back his army to the line of the Mame without
undue haste or any demoralization. No French-
man would suggest that the victorious army of the
Marne did not owe a proportionate share of the
immortal glory of that battle to that little but brave
contingent of Englishmen who, under General
French, did all that the great Commander-in-
Chief asked them to do.

While challenging the justice of this criticism,
let me in passing take issue with another statement
intended for American consumption. Before I left
England I read an interview, given to the press by
a Judge Nippert of Cincinnati. I do not know
who Judge Nippert is. Indeed, I never heard of
him before, but that is probably due to my igno-
rance. At any rate, Judge Nippert (after bathing
in the sunshine of the Kaiser's presence) said that
from the German trenches before Rheims he could

282 The War and Humanity

see every tile on the Cathedral — that ancient
cradle of Christianity in France, and as sacred to
France as Westminster Abbey is to England, —
and added that the structure was still "intact and
still used for the purposes" of a church. The
clear intimation was that it had suffered no injury
and that not even a tile had been destroyed. If
Judge Nippert could see each tile of the Rheims
Cathedral from the German trenches, he should at
once consult either an oculist or a psychologist,
for he is either the most far-sighted man in the
records of ophthalmology or he possesses an
imagination at which even a psychologist like
Munsterberg would marvel. His vision is the
more extraordinary as there is not and never
was a tile on the Cathedral, The efficiency of
German spy glasses may thus be measured by
the fact — of which the literature of this war has
already given voluminous proof — that it is ca-
pable of seeing the things which are not only
invisible, but do not even exist.

It was about a month ago today that I stood in
the Cathedral of Rheims, when shells were even
then falling every five minutes into the city, in
which there were still left about 20,000 civilians.
I saw a hole in the roof made within two weeks of
my visit there, caused by a shell which barely

The Vision of France 283

missed almost the last of the noble thirteenth-
century stained-glass windows of that great Gothic
treasure house, the greatest, perhaps, in all the
world. I saw the splendid Gothic tracery of its
roof, its beautiful carvings, its noble arches muti-
lated beyond all possible repair. While it is true
that the Cathedral as a skeleton still stands, and
may be structurally restored, yet it can never
completely regain its glorious beauty mellowed by
so many ages. It is closed to all sacred uses as
a church, denuded of its priceless contents, its
choir stalls destroyed, and the only thing left in the
interior is the flag of France, which still floats
proudly and defiantly from one of its pillars.

In this connection let me nail another statement
of the overworked German press bureau. The
German Admiralty has consistently claimed that
it sunk the British dreadnought, the Warspite, in
the battle of Jutland. About two months ago I
inspected the Warspite and it was then receiving
its finishing touches of fresh paint. It is afloat
and very much alive. A new war fund should be
started to distribute among official German press
agents copies of the very unveracious biography
of George Washington written by Parson Weems,
for there they can read the story of the cherry tree,
which while in itself untrue, yet illustrates the

284 The War and Humanity

value of truth and the folly of taking liberty with
the facts.

I went to Verdun, now the most heroic place in
all the world. Has there ever been a battle in all
history comparable to it in magnitude and moral
grandeur? Within a few days, the contending
armies will have fought continuously for two hun-
dred days and nights, and, I may say to you, with-
out disclosing the source of my information, that
the casualties at Verdun a month ago exceeded
800,000. Like a stone wall the French poihi has
stood for nearly two hundred days at this eastern
gateway of France in the most desperate battle of
history, and he can still say to a brave and power-
ful invader: "Thus far and no further; and here
shall thy proud waves be stayed."

It is such immortal valour as that displayed
by friend and foe at Verdun that makes of war
a stupendous moral paradox. The chief reason
why the soldier will ever be a godlike hero in
the eyes of men is that, rising above the sel-
fish commonplaces of this working-day world,
he is willing to give the most that he can, his
life, for the people whom he loves, or the cause
in which he believes. Higher than this ideal man
cannot reach, for the spiritual leader of our race
could do no more than lay down His Hf e for others.

The Vision of France 285

It is this that assimilates every soldier, who falls
upon the field of battle, to the great Martyr, and
which gives infinite and unfading beauty to Thor-
waldsen's Lion of Lucerne. The brave Swiss
guard, whose death it commemorates, were not
inspired by patriotism, for they were aliens, but
by simple fidelity to their cause and calling, " even
unto death." The paw of the lion, resting on the
Bourbon lilies in the dark bosom of the everlasting
hills, is the artist's symbol of this undying truth.

It is this consideration which makes a battlefield
like that of Verdun holy ground, for to countless
thousands of men its surrounding hills have proved
a Calvary; its fields, where thousands of men
have poured out the blood of their gallant hearts,
may reverently be likened to a Garden of Geth-
semane, in which countless heroes have felt the
sweat " like unto drops of blood."

The streets of Verdun, in which when I traversed
them shells were still falling, have each been for
many a brave hero a Via Dolorosa, which they
trod to bloody death. In one single factory in
Verdun, suddenly consumed by incendiary shells,
nearly three hundred men were burned alive.

It is something to remember that this com-
mercial age has thus given the high water mark to
human valour, for neither the past can surpass

286 The War and Humanity

Verdun's heroic defense, nor is it conceivable that
in the future men can die in greater numbers or
more bravely for their country'', and this can be
said with equal justification of the French poilu
and the German soldier.

If a better feeling shall ever come to pass be-
tween France and Germany, those great historic
gladiators in the arena of the world's history, it
will arise from the respect which the brave assail-
ants and defenders of Verdun must feel for the
fidelity, "even unto death," which has character-
ized both armies.

I wish I were at liberty to speak of the Com-
manding General of the garrison of Verdun, but I
would violate the regulations under which I was
privileged to visit the front if I mentioned him by
name. I should like to name him because he is
one of the most delightful personalities I met.
Such is the democratic comradeship of the French
Army that the only thing that distinguished this
great leader of a quarter of a million of men from
his humblest soldier in the trenches was three
stars upon his sleeve; otherwise he was dressed in
the regulation blue uniform, with his iron casque
on his head. When he went with me through the
streets of Verdun, everywhere the soldiers' faces
lighted up, and they would say, "Bon jour, mon

The Vision of France 287

General!" And he would give them the same
fraternal greeting they gave him.

The General gave us a luncheon in the subter-
ranean recesses of the Vauban citadel, and had a lit-
tle mimeographed menu-card prepared, which will
always be one of my most prized possessions. I
asked him if he would write a sentiment on the
back of it. This was his gracious response :

"In remembrance of your very kind visit to
Verdun, I take this opportunity to assure you of
my admiration and sympathy for your great and
noble country."

On this menu was a little design representing the
Gallic cock crowing from the battlements of Verdun.
When I saw it, I thought not only of the justifica-
tion for that note of triumph (because I can assure
you that the battle of Verdun is as good as won),
but I thought of a subtler suggestion.

I think one of the noblest dramatic allegories
ever written is by a French writer, Rostand,
and its title is "Chanticleer." You remember
"Chanticleer" represents the noble idealist —
and what has the Frenchman ever been if not
an idealist, not merely a dilettante idealist, but
one willing to sacrifice at any time his life for
his ideals?

I do not know whether Rostand intended to typ-

288 The War and Humanity^

ify France in his "Chanticleer' ' — perhaps the French
Ambassador can enHghten me — but it seemed to me,
as I reread this noble allegory a few days ago, that
this brave and gentle idealist symbolized France.
Perhaps in his generous enthusiasm the Gallic cock,
like Chanticleer, vainly believes that he causes the
sun to rise, and yet France may claim the justifying
achievement that France, as Chanticleer, has often
proclaimed the reddening morn of democracy.

Chanticleer believes that his morning cry drives
black night and the birds of darkness away. He
says, speaking of his cry :

That cry which rises from the earth is such a
cry of love for the light, such a deep and frenzied
cry of love for the golden thing we call the Day,
and that all thirst to feel again! When I feel
that vast call to the Day arising within me, I
expand my soul to make it more sonorous by mak-
ing it more spacious, that the great cry may still
be increased in greatness; before giving it I with-
hold it in my soul a moment; then, when, to expel
it, I contract my soul, I am so convinced of accom-
plishing a great act, I have such faith that my
song will make night crumble like the walls of
Jericho, that, sounding its victory beforehand, my
song springs forth so clear, so proud, so peremptory,
that the horizon, seized with a rosy trembling,
obeys !

Such is the spirit, such the history of France!

The Vision of France 289

It was my great privilege to talk with many
prominent statesmen and soldiers in England, and
in France I broke bread with three distinguished
Generals of the French Army, Gouraud, Lasson, and
Dubois, and as the crowning courtesy the French
Government paid me, I was given a half hour with
General Joffre. I am not permitted to repeat what
he said ; it would not be fair to him, although noth-
ing that he did say could be other than pleasing to
this audience. He is one of the most modest mer.
that God ever made. I stood in his room and
awaited his coming with a thrill of expectation, and
then this great, splendid figure of a man, without
any pomp or circumstance, with neither sword nor
decoration, imattended by officers, came in alone
and welcomed me with a gracious smile, and it
seemed to me, as I stood in the presence of that
modest, silent, well-poised General, that I beheld
a reincarnation of George Washington. Whether
he will resemble Washington, the administrator
and statesman, remains to be seen, but the re-
semblance of the Hero of the Marne to the Lion
of Trenton as a soldier is unmistakable.

I am satisfied that Joffre and his companions-
in-arms feel, with complete sincerity, that they
have this war for civilization won. They have
passed the crisis of a titanic conflict. They drove

X0

290 The War and Humanity

back the invader at the Marne. They have shown
at Verdun that they could repel the most terrific
onslaught that history has recorded, and on the
north and south of the Somme they have demon-
strated by " the arduous greatness of things done "
that they can successfully attack. There, from the
first of July to the present hour, in more than two
months of almost continuous fighting, while there
have been a few temporary reactions, the pro-
gress eastward of the Allies has been steadily
maintained. And if you could have seen, as I
have, the hilly terrain of the battle of the Somme,
you would realize that it was no mean achieve-
ment to drive back steadily from day to day a well-
prepared and very brave enemy as many miles
as they have. It shows that they have gained the
upper hand in a stupendous struggle, and in that
mastery the promise of ultimate success rests.

While walking the streets of Verdun with Owen
Johnson, the well-known American novelist, a
suggestion occurred to us, which I pledged my-
self to communicate to the first American audience
I should address on my return home. France has
generously recognized the aid and assistance which
individual Americans have rendered her cause
in this war; but there is one thing we could do,
which Frenchmen would, I think, especially

The Vision of France 291

appreciate. Let us erect in Verdun a memorial
that shall express the admiration of America for
the splendid valour of France.

How better could we reciprocate the many
noble gifts that France has made to America, such
as the Bartholdi statue in the great harbour of
New York? The memorial should be a noble
one as befits the subject, for no art could do full
justice to the immortal valour of the French
soldiers at Verdun.

APPENDICES

393

APPENDIX I

A DEFENCE OF THE EXECUTION OF EDITH
CAVELL

BY ALFRED F. M. ZIMMERMANN, GERMAN UNDER SECRE-
TARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Mo\'ED by foreign denunciations of the execution
of Miss Edith Cavell, out of which he said Ger-
many's enemies were making capital, Dr. Alfred
F. M. Zimmermann, Under Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, on October 24, 191 5, made the authorized
statement to the staff correspondent of the New
York Times in Berlin.

It was a pity that Miss Cavell had to be executed,
but it was necessary. She was judged justly. We
hope it will not be necessary to have any more
executions.

I see from the English and American press that
the shooting of an Englishwoman and the condem-
nation of several other women in Brussels for trea-
son has caused a sensation, and capital against us
is being made out of the fact. It is undoubtedly
a terrible thing that the woman has been executed;
but consider what would happen to a State, par-
ticularly in war, if it left crimes aimed at the safety
of its armies to go unpunished because committed
295

296 Appendices

by women. No criminal code in the work — least
of all the laws of war — makes such a distinction;
and the feminine sex has but one preference accord-
ing to legal usages, namely that women in a delicate
condition may not be executed. Otherwise, man
and woman are equal before the law, and only the
degree of guilt makes a difference in the sentence
for the crime and its consequences.

I have before me the court's verdict in the Cavell
case, and can assure you that it was gone into with
the utmost thoroughness, and was investigated and
cleared up to the smallest details. The result was
so convincing, and the circumstances were so clear,
that no war court in the world could have given any
other verdict, for it was not concerned with a single
emotional deed of one person, but a well-thought-
out plot, with many far-reaching ramifications,
which for nine months succeeded in doing valuable
service to our enemies to the great detriment of our
armies. Countless Belgian, French, and English
soldiers are again fighting in the ranks of the Allies
who owe their escape to the activities of the band
now found guilty, whose head was the Cavell woman.
Only the utmost sternness could do away with such
activities under the very nose of our authorities,
and a Government which in such case does not
resort to the sternest measures sins against its most
elementary duties toward the safety of its own
army.

All those convicted were thoroughly aware of
the nature of their acts. The court particularly
weighed this point with care, letting off several of
the accused because they were in doubt as to whether
they knew that their acts were punishable. Those

Appendices 297

condemned knew what they were doing, for nume-
rous public proclamations had pointed out the fact
that aiding enemies' armies was punishable with
death.

I know that the motives of the condemned were
not base; that they acted from patriotism; but in
war one must be prepared to seal one's patriotism
with blood whether one faces the enemy in battle
or otherwise, and in the interest of one's cause, does
deeds which justly bring after them the death
penalty. Among our Russian prisoners are several
young girls who fought against us in soldiers' uni-
forms. Had one of these girls fallen no one would
have accused us of barbarity against women. Why
now, when another woman has met death, to which
she knowingly exposed herself, as did her comrades
in battle?

There are moments in the lives of nations where
consideration for the existence of the individual is
a crime against all. Such a moment was here. It
was necessary once for all to put an end to the
activity of our enemies, regardless of their motives ;
therefore the death penalty was executed so as to
frighten off all those who, counting on preferential
treatment for their sex, take part in undertakings
punishable by death. Were special consideration
shown to such women we should open the door wide
to such activities on the part of women, who are
often more clever in such matters than the cleverest
male spy. The man who is in a position of re-
sponsibility must do that, but, unconcerned about
the world's judgment, he must often follow the
difficult path of duty.

If, despite these considerations, it is now being

298 Appendices

discussed whether mercy shall be shown the rest
of those convicted, and if the life which they have
forfeited under recognized law is given back to them,
you can deduce from that how earnestly we are
striving to bring out feelings of humanity in accord
with the commandments of stern duty. If the
others are pardoned it will be at the expense of the
security of our armies, for it is to be feared that new
attempts will be made to harm us when it is believed
that offenders will go unpunished or suffer only a
mild penalty. Only pity for the guilty can lead to
such pardons ; they will not be an admission that the
suspended sentence was too stern.

Dr. Zimmermann said in conclusion that there
was not a word of truth in the report that the
soldiers at first refused to shoot Miss Cavell, and
then aimed so badly that an officer was forced to
give the coup de grdce. He stated:

The weakness of our enemies' arguments is
proved by the fact that they do not attempt to com-
bat the justice of the sentence but try to influence
public opinion against us by false reports of the
execution. The official report before me shows that
it was carried out according to the prescribed forms,
and that death resulted instantly from the first
volley, as certified by the physician present.

APPENDIX II

APPEAL OF THE BELGIAN BISHOPS

A Letter Unparalleled in Christian History, Addressed
to the Catholic Prelates of Germany.

[Though this much-discussed letter of Cardinal Mercier and
the Episcopate of Belgium was known to have been written in
November, 191 5, its full text remained unknown to the outside
world until it was published at Havre on January 14, 1916.
The Kaiser refused to allow it to reach the German clergy, and
Cardinal Mercier went to Rome and sought to have it forwarded
through official channels, but apparently without success.]

November 24, 1915.

To their Eminences the Cardinals and their Lordships
the Bishops of Germany, Bavaria, and Austria-
Hungary:

As Catholic Bishops, you, the Bishops of Germany
on one hand and we, the Bishops of Belgium, France,
and England on the other, have been giving for a year
an unsettling example to the world.

Scarcely had the German armies trodden the soil of
our country than the rumoiu: was spread among you
that our civil population was taking part in military
operations; that the women of Vis6 and Li6ge were
putting out your soldiers' eyes; that the populace in
Antwerp and Brussels had sacked the property of

expelled Germans.

399

300 Appendices

In the first days of August (1914), Dom Ildefonds
Herwegen, Abbot of Maria Laach, sent to the Cardinal
Archbishop of Malines a telegram in which he begged
him, for the love of God, to protect German soldiers
against the tortures which our countrymen were
supposed to be inflicting on them.

Now it was notorious that our Government had
taken useful measures so that every citizen might be
instructed in the laws of war; in each commune, the
arms of the inhabitants had to be deposited in the
communal house; by posters, the population was
warned that only citizens regularly enrolled under the
flag were authorized to bear arms; and the clergy,
anxious to aid the State in its mission, had spread,
by word of mouth, by parish bulletins, by posters on
church doors, the instructions given by Government.

We were habituated for a century to the rule of
peace, and we had no idea that any one, in good faith,
could attribute to us violent instincts. We were
strong in our right and in the sincerity of our peaceful
intentions; and we answered calumnies about "free
shooters" and "eyes put out" with a shrug of the
shoulders, since we were persuaded that the truth
would be known, without delay, of itself.

The clergy and episcopate of Belgium had personal
relations with ninnerous priests, members of religious
communities, and Bishops of Germany and Austria;
the Eucharistic Congresses of 1909 at Cologne and
1 91 2 at Vienna had given them an opportunity of
nearer acquaintance and mutual appreciation. We
felt assured that Catholics of the nations at war with
our own would not judge us lightly; and, without
troubling himself much about the contents of Dom
Ildefonds's telegram, the Cardinal of Malines limited

Appendices 301

his reply to an invitation to preach gentleness toward
ourselves — for, he added, "we are told that German
troops are shooting innocent Belgian priests."

From the very first days of August, crimes had been
committed at Battice, Vise, Berneau, Herv6, and
elsewhere, but we wished to hope that they would
remain isolated deeds; and, knowing the very high
relations which Dom Ildefonds had, we put great
confidence on the following declaration which he sent
us on the i ith of August :

I am informed, at first hand, that formal orders have been
given to German soldiers by the military authorities to spare
the innocent. As to the very deplorable fact that even priests
have lost their Hves, I allow myself to bring to your Eminence's
attention that, within these last days, the dress of priests and
monks has become the object of suspicion and scandal, since
French spies have used the ecclesiastical costume, and even that
of religious communities, to disguise their hostile intentions.

Meanwhile, the acts of hostility toward innocent
population went on.

On August 18, 1914, the Bishop of Lidge wrote to
Mayor Bayer, Governor of the City of Lidge :

One after the other, several villages have been destroyed;
notable persons, among whom were parish priests, have been
shot; others have been arrested, and all have protested their
innocence. I know the priests of my diocese; I cannot beUeve
that a single one of them would have made himself guilty of
acts of hostiUty towards the German soldiers. I have visited
several ambulances, and I have seen German soldiers cared for
in them with the same zeal as Belgians. This they themselves
acknowledge.

[The entire text of the letter of the Bishop of Lidge is ap-
pended to the Bishop's appeal. His protest was renewed on
August 2ist to General Kolewe, who had become Military
Governor of Li6ge; and again, on August 29th, to his Excellency

302 Appendices

Baron von der Goltz, Governor-General of the occupied pro-
vinces of Belgium, who was lodging at that time in the Bishop's
palace at Li^ge.]

The letter remained unanswered.

In the beginning of September, the Emperor of
Germany covered with his authority the caltminious
accusations of which our innocent populations were
the object. He sent to Mr. Wilson, President of the
United States, this telegram, which, so far as we know,
has not hitherto been retracted:

The Belgian Government has publicly encouraged the civil
population to take part in this war, which it has been preparing
carefully for a long time. The cruelties committed in such a
guerrilla war, by women and even by priests, on doctors and
nurses have been such that my Generals have finally been
obliged to have recourse to most rigorous methods to chastise
the guilty and to prevent the sanguinary population continuing
its abominable, criminal, and odious deeds. Several villages
and even the city of Louvain have had to be demolished
(excepting the very beautiful Hotel de Ville) in the interest of
our defence, and for the protection of our troops. My heart
bleeds when I see that such measures have been made in-
evitable and when I think of the numberless innocent people
who have lost home and goods as a consequence of those
criminal deeds.

This telegram was posted up in Belgium, by order of
the German Government, on September nth. On
the very next day, September 12th, the Bishop of
Namur demanded to be received by the Military
Governor of Namur, and protested against the
reputation His Majesty sought to give to the Belgian
clergy; he affirmed the innocence of all the members
of the clergy who had been shot or maltreated, and

Appendices 303

declared that he was ready himself to publish any
culpable deeds which might be proved.

The offer of the Bishop of Namur was not accepted
and no answer was made to his protestation.

Thus calumny was able to pursue its course freely.
The organ of the Catholic Ventre rivalled the Lutheran
press; and the day when thousands of our fellow-
countrymen, ecclesiastics, and laymen, of Vis6,
Aerschot, Wessemael, Herent, Lou vain, and twenty
other places, all as innocent of acts of war or cruelty
as you and we, were taken off as prisoners and passed
through the railway stations of Aix la Chapelle and
Cologne, and, for mortal hours, were given over as a
show to the unwholesome curiosity of the Rhenish
metropolis, they had the grief to know that their
Catholic brethren had vomited over them just as
many insults as did the Lutherans of Celle, Soltau,
or Magdeburg.

Not one voice was lifted up in Germany to take the
defence of the victims.

The legend which was transforming innocent into
guilty persons and crime into an act of justice thus
became accredited, and on May lo, 1915, the White
Book — an official organ of the German Empire —
dared to adopt it on its own account, and to circulate
in neutral countries these odious and cowardly false-
hoods :

There is no doubt that German wounded have been stripped
and finished, yes, and frightfully mutilated by the Belgian
population, and that even women and young girls have taken
part in such abominations. Wounded soldiers have had their
eyes put out, their ears, nose, fingers, and sexual organs cut
off, or their bowels opened; in other cases, German soldiers
have been poisoned, hanged to trees, have had boiling liquid

304 Appendices

poured over them, and been sometimes burned, so that they
have endured death in atrocious pain. Such bestial proceedings
of the population not only violate obligations expressly for-
mulated by the Geneva Convention concerning the attention
and care due to the wounded of an enemy army, but they are
contrary to the fundamental principles of the laws of war and
humanity.

Put yourselves for a moment in our place, dear
brethren in the faith and priesthood.

We know that these shameless accusations of the
Imperial Government are, from one end to the other,
calumnies — we know it and we swear it.

Now, your Government invokes for its justification
witnesses that have been subjected to no check and to
no cross-examination.

Is it not your duty, not only in charity, but in
strict justice, to enlighten yourselves, to enlighten the
faithful of your flocks, and to furnish us with the
occasion to establish judicially our innocence?

You owe us this satisfaction in the name of Catholic
charity which dominates national conflicts. You owe
it to us — today — in strict justice, because a com-
mittee, covered by at least your tacit approbation,
and composed of all that is most distinguished in
politics and science and religion in Germany, has
undertaken the patronage of the official accusations
and confided to the pen of a Catholic priest, Professor
A. J. Rosenberg of Paderborn, the task of condensing
them in a book entitled The Lying Accusations of
French Catholics against Germany, and has thus put
on the back of Catholic Germany the responsibility
of the active and public propagation of the calumny
against the Belgian people.

When the French book, to which German Catholics

Appendices 305

oppose their own, saw the light, their Eminences
Cardinal von Hartmann, Archbishop of Cologne, and
Cardinal von Bettinger, Archbishop of Munich, felt it
necessary to address to their Emperor a telegram in
these words:

Revolted by the defamation of the German Fatherland and
its glorious army contained in the book, The German War and
Catholicism, we have the heartfelt need of expressing our
sorrowful indignation to your Majesty in the name of the whole
German episcopate. We shall not fail to lift up our complaint
even to the Supreme Head of the Church.

Very well. Most Reverend Eminences, Venerated
Colleagues of the German episcopate, in our turn, we
Archbishops and Bishops of Belgium — revolted by the
calumnies against our Belgian country and its glorious
army, which are contained in the White Book of the
Empire and reproduced in the German Catholics'
answer to the work published by French Catholics —
we feel the need of expressing to our King, to our
Government, to our army, to our country, our sorrow-
ful indignation.

And that our protestation may not run counter to
yours, without useful effect, we ask you to be willing
to aid us to institute a tribunal for searching inquiry of
evidence and counter evidence. In the name of your
official tribunal, you will appoint as many members as
you desire, and as it pleases you to choose; we will
appoint as many more, three for examination, one
each side. And we will ask of a neutral State — Holland,
Spain, Switzerland, or the United States — to appoint
for us a " superarbiter " who will preside over the
operations of the tribunal.

You have taken your complaints to the Sovereign
Head of the Church.

3o6 Appendices

It is not just that he should hear only your voice.

You will have the loyalty to aid us to make our
voice heard also.

We have — you and we — an identical duty, to put
before His Holiness tried documents on which he may
be able to base his judgment.

You are not ignorant of the efforts we have made,
one after another, to obtain from the power which
occupies Belgium the constitution of a tribunal of
investigation.

The Cardinal of Malines, on two occasions — Janu-
ary 24, I9i5,and February 10, 1915, — and the Bishop
of Namur, by a letter addressed to the Military
Governor of his province, April 12, 1915, both so-
licited the formation of a tribunal to be composed
of German and Belgian arbiters in equal number
and to be presided over by a delegate from a neu-
tral State.

Our efforts met with an obstinate refusal.

Yet the German authority was desirous to institute
investigations, but it wished them to be one-sided —
that is, without any judicial value.

After it had refused the investigation demanded by
the Cardinal of Malines, the German authorities went
into different localities where priests had been shot
and peaceful citizens massacred or made prisoners,
and there — on the depositions of a few witnesses
taken haphazard or selected discreetly, sometimes in
presence of a local authority who was ignorant of the
German language and thus found himself forced to
accept and sign blindly the minutes made — it be-
lieved itself authorized to come to conclusions which
were afterwards to be presented to the public as
results of cross-examinations.

Appendices 307

The German investigation was carried out in
November, 1914, at Louvain, in such conditions. It
is, therefore, devoid of any authority.

So it is natural that we should turn to you.

The court of arbitration, which the power occupying
our country has refused us, you will grant us — and
you will obtain from your Government the public
declaration that witnesses can be cited by you and by
us to tell all they know, without having to dread
reprisals. Before you, under cover of your moral
authority, they will feel themselves more seciire and
be encouraged to bear witness to what they have seen
and heard; the world will have faith in the episcopate
of our two nations united; our common control will
give authenticity to the witness borne and will guar-
antee the fidelity of the report. The investigation
thus carried out will be believed.

We demand this investigation, Eminences and
venerated colleagues, before all else, to avenge the
honour of the Belgian people. Calumnies put forth
by your people and its highest representatives have
violated it. And you know as well as we the adage
of the human, Christian, Catholic moral theology:
"Without restitution, no pardon." (" Non remittitur
peccatum, nisi restituatur abletum. ")

Your people, by the organ of political powers and
of its highest moral authorities, has accused our
fellow-citizens of giving themselves up to atrocities and
horrors on wounded German soldiers, and particulars
are given, as above cited, by the White Book and
the German Catholics' manifesto. To all such accusa-
tions we oppose a formal denial — and we demand to
give the proofs of the truth of our denial.

On the other hand, to justify the atrocities com-

3o8 Appendices

mitted in Belgium by the German Army, the political
power, by the very title it gave to its White Book —
Die Volkerrechtwidrige Fuhring des Belgischen Volks-
kriegs {The Violation of the Law of Nations by the War
Proceedings of the Belgian People) — and the hundred
Catholics who signed the book — The German War and
Catholicism: German Answer to French Attacks —
assert that the German Army found itself in Belgium
in the case of legitimate defence against a treacherous
organization of free-shooters.

We affirm that there was nowhere in Belgium any
organization of free-shooters, and we demand in the
name of our national honour, which has been calum-
niated, the right to give proofs of the truth of our
affirmation.

You will call whom you choose before the tribunal of
cross-investigation. We shall invite to appear there
all the priests of parishes where civilians, priests,
members of religious communities, or laymen were
massacred or threatened with death to the cry, "Man
hat geschossen" (Someone has been shooting"); we
shall ask all these priests to sign, if you wish it,
their testimony under oath, and then, under penalty
of pretending that the whole Belgian clergy is per-
jured, you will have to accept, as the whole civilized
world will not be able to refuse, the conclusions of this
solemn and decisive investigation.

But we add. Eminences and venerated colleagues,
that you have the same interest as ourselves in this
constitution of a tribunal of honour.

For, relying on your direct experience, we know —
and we affirm — that the German Army gave itself
up in Belgium, in a hundred different places, to pillage
and incendiarism, to imprisoning and massacres and

Appendices 309

sacrileges contrary to all justice and to all sentiment
of humanity.

This we affirm, in particular, for the communes
whose names figure in our pastoral letters, and in the
two notes addressed by the Bishops of Namur and
Lidge (respectively on the 31st of October and the
1st of November, 1915) to His Holiness Benedict XV.,
to his Excellency the Nuncio of Brussels, and to the
Ministers or representatives of neutral countries at
Brussels.

Fifty innocent priests, thousands of innocent faith-
ful, were put to death; hundreds of others, whose lives
have been preserved by circumstances independent
of their persecutor's will, were put in danger of death ;
thousands of innocent people were made prisoners,
many of them underwent months of detention, and
when they were released the most minute questions
to which they had been subjected had brought out
against them no evidence of guilt.

The crimes cry to heaven for vengeance.

If, when we formulate these denunciations, we
calumniate the German Arm3'-, or if the military
authority had just reasons to order or permit these
acts, which we call criminal, it belongs to the interest
and to the national honour of Germany to confound
us. Just so long as German justice refuses to listen
we keep the right and duty to denounce what, in
conscience, we consider a grave violation of justice
and of our honour.

The Chancellor of the German Empire, in the
Reichstag session of the 4th of August, declared that
the invasion of Luxemburg and Belgium was "in
contradiction with the prescriptions of the right of
nations"; he recognized that, "by passing over the

310 Appendices

justified protests of the Governments of Luxem-
burg and Belgium, he was committing an injustice
which he promised to repair"; and the Sovereign
Pontiff, intentionally alluding to Belgium — as His
Eminence Cardinal Gasparri, Secretary of State,
wrote to M. Van den Heuvel, Belgian Minister —
pronounced in his Consistorial Allocution of January
22, 1 91 5, this irreformable judgment: "It belongs to
the Roman Pontiff, whom God has established as a
supreme interpreter and avenger of the eternal law, to
proclaim, before all else, that none may, for any reason
whatsoever, violate justice."

Yet, since that time, politicians and casuists seek
to dodge or enfeeble those decisive words. In their
reply to French Catholics, German Catholics engage
themselves in like mean subtleties and would fain
corroborate them by fact. They have at their dis-
position two witnesses: one — who is anonymous —
saw, so he says, on the 26th of July, French officers in
conversation with Belgian officers in the Boulevard
Anspach at Brussels; the other, a certain Gustav
Lochard, of Rimogue, deposes that "two regiments of
French dragoons, the Twenty-eighth and the Thir-
tieth, and one battery crossed the Belgian frontier on
the 31st of July, 19 14, and remained exclusively on
Belgian territory during all the following week."

Now, the Belgian Government affirms that, "before
the declaration of war, no French troop, no matter
how small, had entered Belgium." And it adds:
"There is no honest witness who can rise up against
this affirmation."

The Government of our King, therefore, accuses
German Catholics of asserting an error.

Here is a question of prime importance, both politi-

Appendices 311

cal and moral, on which we ought to enlighten the
public conscience.

If, however, you should refuse to examine this
general question, we ask you at least to check off the
witness on which German Catholics have relied to
decide the question against us. The deposition of this
Gustav Lochard touches facts easy to control. Ger-
man Catholics will wish to free themselves from the
reproach of error and will make it a duty of conscience
to retract the error if they have let themselves be
deceived to our injury.

We are not ignorant that you have a repugnance to
believe that regiments, of whom, you say, you know
the discipline, the honour, the religious faith, could
have given themselves up to the inhuman acts with
which we reproach them. You wish to persuade your-
selves that it is not so, because it cannot be so.

And, forced by evidence, we answer you — it can
be so because it is so.

In face of the fact, no presumption holds.

For you as for us there is but one issue — the verifi-
cation of the fact by a commission whose impartiality
is and appears to all to be beyond dispute.

We have no difficulty in understanding your state
of mind.

We, too, respect, believe us, the spirit of discipline
and labour and faith of which we have so often had
proofs and gathered testimony among yoxir fellow-
countrymen. Very numerous are those Belgians
now who bitterly confess their deception. But they
have lived through the sinister events of August and
September. The truth has triumphed over all in-
terior resistance. The fact can no longer be denied —
Belgiimi has been made a martyr.

312 Appendices

When foreigners of neutral countries — American s
Hollanders, Swiss, Spanish — ask us the way in which
the German war has been carried on, and wish us to
narrate certain scenes whose horror, in spite of our-
selves, we have verified, we soften the impression,
feeling how far the naked truth passes the limits of
probability.

Nevertheless, when you have been placed in the
presence of the entire reality, when you have been
able to analyze the causes, some distant, others
immediate, of what one of your Generals — before the
ruins of the little village of Schallenlez-Diest — called
the "tragic error"; when you hear the influences
which your soldiers underwent at the moment of their
entry into Belgium, and in the intoxication of their
first successes, the unlikelihood of the truth will
appear to you, as to us, less disconcerting.

Most of all, Eminences and venerated colleagues,
let not yourselves be held back by the vain pretext
than an investigation would be now premature.

We might say so, indeed, because at the present
hour the investigation would have to be made in
circumstances unfavourable to ourselves. Our popula-
tions, in fact, have been so profoundly terrorized, and
the prospects of reprisals is still so sombre for them,
that the witnesses we may call before a tribunal which
would be German in part would scarcely dare to tell
the truth to the end.

But decisive reasons are opposed to all dilatory
procedure.

The first, that which will go straight to your hearts,
is that we are the weak and you are the powerful.
You would not wish to abuse your strength against
us.

Appendices 313

Public opinion usually goes to him who first pos-
sesses himself of it.

Now, whereas you have all liberty to flood neutral
countries with your publications, we are imprisoned
and reduced to silence. Hardly are we permitted to
lift up our voices inside our churches; the preaching
in them is checked off, that is, parodied by paid spies;
protestations of conscience are qualified revolts
against public authorities; what we write is stopped
at the frontier as contraband. So you alone enjoy
freedom of speech, and of the pen, and if you will,
in a spirit of charity and equity, procure a particle
of it for Belgians who are accused and give them a
chance to defend themselves, it is for you to come to
their protection as soon as possible. The old law adage
— "Audiatur et altera pars" (Let the other side be
heard")— is posted up, they tell us, at the doors of
many German courts of law. In any case, for you as
for us, it is law for the official judgments of Bishops,
and doubtless, too, with you as with us, it circulates in
the people's speech under this figure — "Who hears
but one bell hears but one sound, "

You will say, perhaps: "That is the past, forget it.
Instead of casting oil on the fire, try rather to pardon
and join your efforts with those of the power occupying
your territory — for it only asks to heal the wounds of
the unhappy Belgian people."

Oh, Eminences and dear colleagues, add not irony
to injustice !

Have we not suffered enough? Have we not been
— are we not still — tortured cruelly enough?

It is the past ; resign yourselves — forget.

The past! But all the wounds are still bleeding!
There is not an honest heart that is not swollen with

314 Appendices

indignation. While we hear our own Government
saying to the face of the world, "That one is twice
guilty who, after violating another's rights, tries still,
audaciously and cynically, to justify himself by im-
puting to his victim faults which he had never com-
mitted," our own people can only by doing violence
to themselves stifle words of malediction. But yester-
day a countryman in the suburb of Malines learned
that his son had fallen on the field of battle. A priest
consoled him. And the brave man answered: "Oh,
for my son, I give him to our country! But they took
my eldest son, the cowards, and shot him down in a
ditch!"

How do you wish us to obtain from such unfor-
tunates, who have been made to know every torture,
a sincere word of resignation and forgiveness, so long
as those who have made them suffer refuse them one
word of acknowledgment or repentance or promise of
reparation ?

Germany will not give us back the blood she has
made to flow and the innocent lives her armies have
mowed down; but it is in her power to make restitu-
tion to the Belgian people of their honour, which she
has violated or let be violated.

This restitution we demand from you; from you
who are the first and chief representatives of Christian
morals in the Church of Germany.

There is something more profoundly sad than
political divisions and material disaster — it is the
hatred which injustice, real or presumed, heaps up
in so many hearts made to love each other. As
pastors of our peoples, does it not belong to us, is there
not incumbent on us, the mission to make easy the
dying away of evil feeling and to re-establish on the

Appendices 3^5

foundation so shaken now of justice a union in charity
of all children of the great Catholic family?

(The letter closes with specific citations of inter-
national laws which the German Empire is stated to
have violated in Belgium, and is signed:)

D. J. Cardinal Mercier,
Archbishop of Malines.

Anthony,
Bishop of Ghent.

GUSTAVE, J.,
Bishop of Bruges.

Thomas Louis,
Bishop of Namur.

Martin Hubert,
Bishop of Liege.

Amedee Crooy,
Appointed Bishop of Tournai.

APPENDIX III
AMERICA AND THE ALLIES

[Speech of Viscount Bryce, made at the luncheon given in
London by the Pilgrims' Society of that city in honour of the
author on July 5, 1916.]

Viscount Bryce said: My Lords and Gentlemen,
I now rise to ask you to drink the health of Mr. Beck.
We have not had a luncheon of the Pilgrims since
July, 1 914, immediately before the outbreak of war,
and we then little knew how much we were going to
owe to Mr. Beck's countrymen, for the sympathy,
the great majority of them have shown in all our
efforts and struggles of the past, and for the moral
support they have given to the cause which they
believe to be a righteous cause. Mr. Beck comes to
us not unknown. I hardly feel like introducing him
to you because I am sure there cannot be one of you
who does not know what admirable work he has done
for the Allied cause in his own country. Unsolicited
by any one on the part of the Allies, moved only by
his strong sense of enthusiasm for what he believed
to be right and just, Mr. Beck, shortly after the be-
ginning of the war, set himself to study its causes, and
the responsibility for its outbreak, and produced a
book on that subject which for the clearness of its

316

Appendices 317

statements and the cogency of its legal arguments
has not been surpassed, if indeed it has been equalled,
by any writer since the war began. Mr. Beck, as a
trained lawyer, and a distinguished member of the
great profession which he adorns, saw the necessity
of examining the question with the lawyer's eye, and
by his clear dispassionate analysis of the facts and
circumstances that preceded the war, he has produced
his most convincing book, entitled The Evidence in
the Case, showing upon which side right and justice
lie. I dare say you know Mr. Beck has rendered us
another service. He has gone to Canada, and by
the speeches which he has made there he has roused,
if it were possible to rouse, further enthusiasm in
Canada for that common cause which Canada has
maintained with such splendid valour. There is
nothing we can look back upon in these dark and
trying days with more satisfaction, and look forward
to with more hopeful enthusiasm, than the fact that
the public opinion of the United States has been in
unison with the public opinion of Canada, and that
both of them have given us that moral support which
we have prized so highly. Mr. Beck is here on a short
visit, in the course of which many of us will, I trust,
have opportunities of seeing him in private, and in
the course of which he will also visit parts of the
country sufficient to enable him to see that the feeling
that moves us here in London is no less hearty and
ardent everywhere over our country. He will wish
when he returns to tell his countrymen what he has
seen here, and to tell them in particular why we are
resolved all over Britain to prosecute this war with
our utmost energy. Mr. Beck will tell you what the
sentiment of the United States is, but I think I shall

3i8 Appendices

not anticipate him too far if I say that ever since the
merits of the case became known, and not least owing
to the efforts that he and others have made to enlighten
his and their countrymen, the opinion of all that is
best and wisest in the United States has been over-
whelmingly with us. Nevertheless, there is in the
United States a certain small section of those who
call themselves Lovers of Peace, who are from time
to time heard suggesting that the terrors and horrors
of war are so great that the Powers are bound at all
hazards and on any terms to conclude a peace. I
received a few days ago, as probably some others
among you have done, an address from the United
States, signed by a certain number — by no means a
large number — of United States citizens, urging upon
the people of this country that this war is and will
be indecisive, that it will end in what is called "a
draw," and that the best thing we can do is to make
peace upon any sort of terms, which I suppose means
terms which Germany would be willing to accept
forthwith. I notice that a large proportion of the
small number of signatories of that address came from
Germany or had German names, and that fact has
some significance. Now, with your permission, I
should like to tell Mr. Beck, and I think I may do so
on your behalf, why it is that we do not propose to
follow this advice, and I feel sure that when he has
had opportunities of learning the sentiment of this
country, he will carry back to his own countrymen a
full and just picture of that sentiment. Now, Mr.
Beck, we too whom you see here are also lovers of
peace. Speaking for myself, I may say that I have
worked for peace inside and outside Parliament for
more than thirty years, and I see around me many

Appendices 319

others who have done the same. We are as much
impressed by the horrors of war as any pacifist in the
United States can be. We yield to no one in our
desire that these horrors and this bloodshed should
cease. Why, gentlemen, there is not one of us who
has not lost relatives and friends, who made to him
much of the joy and pleasure of life. Why is it then
that we think that the time for making peace has
not yet arrived? In the first place, gentlemen, this
war is not going to be a draw. The Allies are going
to win. We believe that they will win not merely
because our own troops are daily driving back the
Germans in France, not merely because of the brilliant
advance which the armies of Russia are making, not
merely because of the resistance of the soldiers of
France standing like a rock and delivering mag-
nificent counter-charges against the enemy with
all the traditional valour that belongs to that
great nation. We believe it, and have all along
believed it, because we know the balance of
strength is with the Allies, that our resources are
greater, and that with those greater resources we
shall triumph on land, and because we know also
that we hold the unshaken and unshakable con-
trol of the seas. Then further, we believe that
the German Government are not prepared to make
peace upon any terms we can possibly accept. The
German Government themselves may know that they
are going to be beaten, but their people do not yet
know it. They have fed their people with falsehoods,
keeping them in total ignorance of the true state of
affairs. They have endeavoured to beguile and cheer
their people by prospects of territorial conquests and
annexations, and they are now afraid to acknowledge

320 Appendices

the truth, and to disappoint the German people by
consenting to peace upon such terms as we and our
Allies can accept. Another thing also I will ask Mr.
Beck to tell his countrymen. It is this : We in Britain
feel that any peace made upon the present position
of affairs would not be a real peace. It would be a
mere truce. It would be a truce full of disquiet, of
constant anxieties and recurring alarms. Prepara-
tions for war would continue; and the nations would
again be pressed down by the frightful weight of
armaments. And, lastly, there is one more reason
why peace cannot be made at this moment. It is
not for ourselves merely that we are fighting : it is for
great principles, to which we owe a duty. We are
fighting for those principles of right and humanity
which the German Government has outraged and
which must at all costs be maintained. We do not
hate the German people. We have no desire to break
up Germany, nor to inflict a permanent injury upon
the German people. Our quarrel is with the German
Government. What we desire is to exorcise that evil,
spirit which a long regime of Prussianism has been
implanting in the Germans. We want to discredit
a military caste and a military system which threatens
every country in the world, threatens the American
countries too, Mr. Beck, your own country as well
as ours. Here, in Europe, Germany has not been
content since 1871 to be a great and prosperous
nation living in peace with other nations beside it.
Under the influence of this militant caste and in
this military and aggressive spirit there has grown
up a desire to dominate the world, and now the
only safety for the world is to discredit that spirit
and that caste. That spirit has been implanted,

Appendices 321

and that caste has obtained control of Gennany
and imposed its yoke upon the German people,
owing to a series of successes in three wars, those
of 1864, 1866, and 1870. It is the prestige of
those three wars in which Germany was successful
that has enabled this caste to rivet its dominion
upon the German people, and has filled the Ger-
man people with this spirit of aggression, and to-
day nothing but the destruction of that prestige,
and nothing but the discrediting of that caste, will
enable the German people to recover their lib-
erty. I hope — and I think we can see already some
signs for our hope — that when that spirit has
been cast out of Germany and her people have for
themselves recovered that ' liberty for which they
were striving before Bismarck's ascendancy began,
they will be willing again to live at peace with
their neighbours. Meantime, we must go on. We
did not enter this war to win anything for ourselves,
and all that we want now as the result of the war is
security for ourselves and our great oversea Dominions,
that Belgium and Northern France should be delivered
from the invader, that compensation be made to
Belgium for what she has suffered, and that there
shall be effected such changes in the East as will
prevent the Turkish allies of Germany from ever
again massacring their Christian subjects, and will
prevent those Turkish allies from being used as the
vassals and tools of Germany in that Eastward march
which she has planned. Gentlemen, we must go on
with the war till Germany has been brought to a
frame of mind in which she will accept such terms as
these. This battle which we are waging is a battle
for those principles of right which were violated when

322 Appendices

innocent non-combatants were slaughtered in Belgium,
and when innocent non-combatants were drowned in
the Lusitania. The Allies must press on to victory.
They must press on till victory has been won for those
principles, and there has been established a perma-
nent peace resting on the sure foundations of justice
and freedom. Gentlemen, I ask you to drink the
health of our friend, Mr. Beck.

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